Tuesday, July 1, 2008

181 bids for oil exploration blocks

by Jenny Hodge

India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry has received a total of 181 bids from 96 domestic and global oil majors including Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Reliance Industries, Essar Oil, British Petroleum and BHP Billiton, for 45 oil and gas exploration blocks under the seventh round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP-VII).

However, the government could not find bidders for 12 of the 57 blocks that were on offer.

The winners will be decided by August 31.

The Indian federal government had offered 57 exploration blocks under NELP-VII on 13th December, 2007.

This has been the highest number of blocks offered so far under NELP, covering an area of 171,000 sq km.

Announcing this to media persons, in New Delhi, Director General of Hydrocarbons V. K. Sibal said that the 12 blocks that failed to receive any bids were the recycled blocks.

He said all blocks received multiple bids and two small blocks received 17 bids.

Those who applied for the blocks are ONGC, Reliance Industries, Essar Oil, British Petroleum, BHP Billiton etc.

State-owned ONGC is understood to have bid for the maximum number of blocks, while Essar Exploration and Production Ltd has bid for four shallow water blocks along with US-based Nobel Energy, in addition to one deep water block with GSPC.

Reliance Industries (RIL), which has a major presence in upstream operations, is understood to have bid for an estimated half-a-dozen blocks.

The Government has twice postponed the NELP VII even as the Petroleum Ministry sought to convince the Finance Ministry to grant tax breaks for oil and gas production.

 

 

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