India to offer 25 oil, gas blocks in 10th round: Update

India will offer a total of 25 oil and gas blocks in the tenth bidding round in August or September, according to a senior Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) official.

The offer will cover 13 sedimentary basins, including six onland blocks with an estimated area of 16,871km², six shallow water blocks covering 41,391km², one deepwater block of 9,991km², and 12 ultra deepwater blocks of 12,3733km², the DGH official said.

India offered 136,596.45 km² in 28 upstream oil and gas blocks in the ninth bidding round under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy's (HELP) Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP). The deadline for this round has been extended thrice, with the latest one to 31 August as the government wanted to provide much more granular data about the blocks to help upstream companies make a decision, DGH director-general Pallavi Jain Govil told reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference.

India also extended the deadline for bids for a special upstream bidding round to 16 August from 15 July earlier. It had invited bids for two discovered small oil and gas fields located in the Mumbai offshore region and one coal-bed methane (CBM) gas field in West Bengal.

The conclusion of the ninth round will have a key role to play in the launch of the tenth round as foreign participants have raised key issues with the oil ministry, including ones related to indemnity and compensation, a government official said. These issues have been holding back foreign firms from investing in India. With bigger blocks on offer, there are expectations that it will elicit interest from foreign participants as the government tries to resolve issues raised by these companies.

The move by the government to provide more data to bidders by placing it in the National Data Repository is expected to reverse the tepid response in previous drilling rounds. It is not yet known if this round will elicit interest from foreign participants, as has mostly been the case in previous auctions.

India's upstream licensing has largely been dominated by domestic participants. Indian state-controlled refiner ONGC in January bagged seven of the 10 areas in exploration blocks offered under India's eighth open acreage licensing policy drilling round. A private-sector consortium of Reliance Industries (RIL) and BP, state-controlled Oil India and private-sector Sun Petrochemicals received one block each.

India's hydrocarbon exploration has been lacking because of slow policy implementation, despite its huge demand for oil and gas. The DGH is working to minimise the approval time to increase domestic production and decrease import dependency on oil and gas. Lackluster discoveries, shrinking exploration capital and a complicated tax regime have also limited foreign interest.

The DGH has also started an efficiency department recently to focus on enhanced oil recovery techniques with the use of carbon capture, use and storage technology, Pallavi Jain said during a panel discussion.

By Rituparna Ghosh