ONGC awards 49 marginal fields across four states to seven bidders

Industry players say a major drawback of the bid was that ONGC sought partners who could raise output beyond a pre-agreed baseline and would share revenues only for incremental production

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has awarded 49 marginal oil and gas fields to seven successful bidders. 

These fields are spread across the states of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Assam, covering 13 onland contract areas. 

"The bid process for seeking partners for enhancement of production from 64 marginal nomination fields was held recently. Interested companies participated in the International competitive bidding process for 17 onshore contract areas comprising of producing oil and gas fields," ONGC said in a statement. 

It is expected that with award of these contract areas, the production from these marginal fields would be enhanced. These 64 fields have a cumulative 300 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent natural gas reserves.

The 13 companies that participated in the bidding round include Duganta Oil and Gas, Oilmax, Deep Industries, Dravida Petroleum, Hermes Tech, Shivam Crusher, LNG Bharat, Udayan Oil Solutions, Preserve Infrastructure, Syndicate, M&S Co, Advent Oilfields and Orissa Stevedores. 

According to industry players, one of the major drawbacks of the bid was that ONGC sought partners who could raise output beyond a pre-agreed baseline and will share revenues only for incremental production. It also offered complete marketing and pricing freedom to sell oil and gas on arm''s length basis.

Indigenous crude oil and condensate production during 2019-20 was 5.9 per cent lower compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. 

The cumulative gross production of natural gas of 31180 million standard cubic metre a day for the period FY 2019-20 was lower by 5.2 per cent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. 

The decision to bid out ONGC fields came as part of an effort to increase domestic production and also increase the share of natural gas in the country's energy basket to 15 per cent from around 6 per cent now.