ONGC, Oil India placed bids for oil blocks

State-owned energy majors ONGC and Oil India Ltd along with Reliance-BP, Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta and Sun Petrochemicals Pvt Ltd have placed bids for exploring and producing oil and gas from 10 blocks in the eighth round of auctions under thev open acreage licensing policy (OALP).

According to a notification by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), a total of 13 bids have been placed for the 10 blocks, out of which ONGC has placed nine bids and others have placed one bid each. However, no global oil exploration major placed bids in the international competitive bidding round.

On 7 July last year, the Centre had offered the blocks for bidding in the eighth round of OALP and the deadline for submission of bids was extended a few times. The round was eventually closed last week.

ONGC was the sole bidder for six blocks while Reliance-BP was the sole bidder for the ultradeep sea block in the Krishna Godavari basin, the notification showed. Vedanta, OIL and Sun Petrochemicals bid for one block each where they will compete with ONGC’s bid.The 10 blocks are spread over nine sedimentary basins, covering an area of 36,316.5 sq km. Out of the 10 blocks, two are on land, four in shallow-water, two in deep-water and two in ultra-deep-water areas.

The government allows incentives such as reduced royalty rates, no oil cess, uniform licensing system, marketing and pricing freedom and revenue sharing model to the winning applicants. Exploration rights would be given for full contract life, and they would also be given concessional royalty rates in case of early commercial production.The government has also sought expressions of interest (EoI) under the ninth round of offshore bid round. It has opened 99% of the “no-go” area of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for hydrocarbon exploration and development.