Oil block auction: ONGC, Vedanta top bidders

The Indian Express
May 03, 2018

Vedanta Cairn, operator of the Barmer field in Rajasthan, bid aggressively, while eight other companies, including state-run ONGC, Oil India, Indian Oil and GAIL (India) also put in their bids for the 55 hydrocarbon blocks offered under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP), a critical part of the March 2016-launched Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP).

HELP’s hallmarks are single licence for exploration of all forms of hydrocarbons (including shale gas and coal bed methane), a simple revenue-sharing model and marketing and pricing freedom for the developers. Officials claimed the level of interest shown by bidders “far exceeded expectations”, but the absence of a single foreign oil giant was conspicuous. Reliance Industries stayed away as well.

State-owned ONGC bid for 37 blocks while Vedanta Cairn put in bids for all the 55 areas on offer. As many as 110 bids had been received, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) tweeted. While 92 bids were received for 46 on-land blocks, 18 bids came in for nine offshore blocks.

While the bid amounts were not disclosed, PTI reported that Cairn put in very aggressive bids for 13 blocks and a little less so for another nine. “The remaining bids (by Cairn) were mostly routine,” the agency quoted sources privy to the development, as saying.

Since the last round of bidding under the National Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) in 2010, this is the first major round of hydrocarbon blocks auction to take place in the country. (A clutch of discovered small fields or DSFs was conducted late last year, under HELP, and in February, the Cabinet approved addition of another 60 DSFs to be auctioned later this year). According to Sudhir Mathur, chief executive officer, Vedanta Cairn Oil and Gas, it is a significant achievement that new acreage has been opened up in the country after almost a decade.

Apart from the firms mentioned above, the other bidders for first round of OALP either individually or through consortium include Bharat Petro Resources, Selan Exploration Technology, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company and Sun Petro. 

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