New Delhi: Reliance Industries and its British partner BP have made their first bid for an oil and gas exploration acreage in over eight years by bidding for one of the 32 blocks up for auction in the latest licensing round that saw mining major Vedanta putting in as many as 30 bids while state-owned ONGC vying for 20.
Bidding for 14 blocks on offer in the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) round-II and another 18 oil and gas blocks and 5 coal-bed methane (CBM) blocks on offer in OALP-III closed on Wednesday.
Official sources said Vedanta, which had walked away with 41 out of the 55 blocks offered in OALP-I last year, bid for 30 areas.
Bidding for 14 blocks on offer in the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) round-II and another 18 oil and gas blocks and 5 coal-bed methane (CBM) blocks on offer in OALP-III closed on Wednesday.
Official sources said Vedanta, which had walked away with 41 out of the 55 blocks offered in OALP-I last year, bid for 30 areas.
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Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) bid for 20 blocks while Oil India Ltd (OIL) bid for 16. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), GAIL (India) and SunPetro bid for two blocks each, they said.RIL-BP made an offer for one block in the Krishna Godavari basin.
This is the first time that BP is bidding for exploration acreage in the country. It had entered the country buying 30 per cent stake in RIL's 21 oil and gas exploration blocks in 2011 for USD 7.2 billion. All but a couple of blocks have since been relinquished.
Mukesh Ambani-owned RIL had on its own bid for six blocks in the ninth round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) but did not win any block.
NELP has since been replaced by Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) under which OALP bids round have been held.
Sources said the block RIL-BP bid for is the same which BP had demarcated during the expression of interest (EoI) stage.
India had in July 2017 allowed companies to carve out blocks of their choice with a view to bringing about 2.8 million sq km of unexplored area in the country under exploration.
Under this policy, called open acreage licensing policy or OALP, companies are allowed to put in an EoI for prospecting of oil and gas in an area that is presently not under any production or exploration licence.
The EoIs can be put in at any time of the year but they have accumulated twice annually.
The blocks or areas that receive EoIs at the end of a cycle are put up for auction with the originator or the firm that originally selected the area getting a 5-mark advantage.
The two windows of accumulating EoIs end on May 15 and November 15 every year. EoIs accumulated till May 15 are supposed to be put on auction by June 30 and those in the second window by December 31.
BP made the EoI for a block in the window provided for OALP-II which closed on May 15, 2018. However, the EoIs collected in this window was put on bidding only in January this year, a delay of six months.
A month later, the government offered another 23 oil and gas blocks and CBM blocks in the third round, for which EoIs accumulated by November 15, 2018. Sources said OALP-II and OLAP-III ran concurrently.
Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had at the time of launch of OALP-II bid round on January 7 stated that an investment of about Rs 40,000 crore is expected in the prospecting of oil and gas in blocks offered.
In the first round of OALP last year, as much as Rs 60,000 crore was committed in the exploration of oil and gas in 55 blocks or areas.
In the third round, the government is expecting up to USD 700 million (about Rs 49,000 crore) of investment that it hopes will help raise domestic output and cut imports.
Officials said the 14 blocks in OALP-II are estimated to hold in-place resource of 12,609 million tonne oil and oil equivalent gas.
In OLAP-1, mining mogul Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta walked away with 41 out of 55 blocks bid out. Oil India won nine blocks while ONGC managed to win just two.
The 55 blocks have a total area of 59,282 sq km. This compares to about 1,02,000 sq km under exploration prior to OALP.
Blocks are awarded to the company which offers the highest share of oil and gas to the government as well as commits to do maximum exploration work by way of shooting 2D and 3D seismic survey and drilling exploration wells.
Increased exploration will lead to more oil and gas production, helping the world's third largest oil importer to cut import dependence.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a target of cutting oil import bill by 10 per cent to 67 per cent by 2022 and to half by 2030.
Import dependence has increased since 2015 when Modi had set the target. India imports nearly 84 per cent of its oil needs.
The new policy replaced the old system of government carving out areas and bidding them out. It guarantees marketing and pricing freedom and moves away from production sharing model of previous rounds to a revenue-sharing model, where companies offering the maximum share of oil and gas to the government are awarded the block.
