The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas will call for bids under the first round of the Open Acreage License Policy later this month.

An official statement from the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons said: "The bidding for Round 1 under HELP (Hydrocarbon Exploration License Policy) will start on January 16, 2018. "

"India is one of the most exciting E&P destinations of the future. All the global majors, independents, minors, NOCs (National Oil Companies), IOCs (International Oil Companies), domestic companies are invited to participate, and make a difference," the statement added.

Liberalised bidding process

The bidding process will be through an e-bidding portal operated by Mjunction services limited operating, a 50:50 venture promoted by Steel Authority of India Limited and TATA Steel.

In June 2017, the government had liberalised the regime for oil and gas exploration by announcing the Open Acreage Licensing (OAL) process that allows companies to carve their own areas for hydrocarbon hunting.

The new policy had opened up 2.8 million square kilometres of sedimentary basins for exploration and eventual production. The applications and related bids for the blocks will be held twice a year, in January and July.

Speaking at event of unveiling the National Data Repository, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan had said, "As much as 52 per cent of India’s sedimentary basins are still unappraised and the last seismic data acquisition of the unappraised sedimentary basins was undertaken by the government nearly 25 years ago."

Director-General of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, Atanu Chakraborty, had said that the first window for submitting bids under the OAL was from July 1 to November 15.

Revenue commitments

When asked what the criteria for awarding will be if some acreage gets more than a single bid, Chakraborty said, "When someone identifies the acreage, a revenue commitment is also submitted for it. The bids will be conducted based on those revenue commitments under the revenue sharing contract."

In a bid to encourage more participation, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi had met oil and gas explorers October and assured them that the GST Council will consider their requests for tax rationalisation in all fairness.

Modi had met top corporate honchos and officials from the sector including Rosneft, BP, Reliance, Saudi Aramco, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Vedanta, ONGC, Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL, Petronet LNG, Oil India, HPCL, and Delonex Energy on Monday.

The focus of the meeting was to secure India’s energy future: increase domestic production - aspiration to reduce imports by 2022; build infrastructure: Greenfield and brownfield refineries, petrochemical plants, pipelines, LNG terminals; secure overseas supply - equity, long-term contracts; and attracting FDI and technical expertise.

 03 Jan 2018, 10:43 AM