Of the 26 blocks, 15 are in ultra-deep water, eight are in shallow sea, and three blocks are on land.
Of the 26 blocks, 15 are in ultra-deep water, eight are in shallow sea, and three blocks are on land.
Upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) on Tuesday said India is offering 26 blocks or fields for oil and gas exploration and production in a mega offshore bid round.
Simultaneously, 16 fields for prospecting for Coal-bed Methane (CBM) are also being offered in a separate round.
“The government has announced the offer of 26 blocks covering an area of about 2.23 lakh square kilometers for exploration and development through international competitive bidding,” DGH said without specifying the deadline for bidding.
Of the 26 blocks, 15 areas are in ultra-deep water, eight are in shallow sea, and three blocks are on land.
The bidding round is being conducted under a 2016 policy called Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which was promulgated on March 30, 2016.
Since then, seven bidding rounds of the Open Acreage Licensing Program (OALP) have been concluded and 134 exploration and production blocks have been awarded. These blocks are spread over an area of 2,07,691 sq km of 19 sedimentary basins.
An eighth round was launched in July, offering 10 fields. The winners of that round have not yet been announced.
The successful award of Round-VIII block will add further exploration area of 36,316 sq.km and the cumulative exploration area under OALP regime will be increased to 2,44,007 sq.km.
DGH is calling the latest round under MADAD ‘Offshore Bid Round (OALP Bid Round-IX)’. The area being proposed for exploration in OALP-IX is roughly the size of the area put together in the last eight visits.
DGH said the 16 CBM blocks being offered in the special bidding round are spread over Madhya Pradesh (4), Chhattisgarh, Telangana (3 each), Maharashtra, Odisha (2 each), Jharkhand and West Bengal (1 each).
Like OALP, CBM blocks are being offered on a revenue share basis – the companies offering the highest share of revenue to the government will win the block.
Exceptions to this rule are blocks that are located in low potential basins where work schedules such as seismic shooting or drilling of wells will be the deciding factor.
In addition to the revenue sharing contract model, HELP offers attractive and generous terms such as reduction in royalty rates, no oil cess, no revenue sharing bidding for blocks in low potential basins, marketing and pricing freedom, year-round bidding, Freedom to investors to pick out their blocks of interest, a single license covering both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, among others.