ONGC, partners bag 17 oil & gas blocks

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and partners today walked away with more than half of the 33 oil and gas blocks awarded to successful bidders of the recently concluded eighth round of auction under the New Exploration Licensing Policy.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved award of 33 out of the 36 exploration areas that were bid in the latest NELP round that closed on October 12, Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters.

Of the 70 blocks offered in NELP-VIII, only 36 attracted bids with ONGC and partners bidding for a maximum of 25. The state-owned firm and its partner won 17 areas.

Among the 24 deep water blocks that the government had put on offer, only 8 received bids, all of which were single bids. ONGC and partners bagged seven, while Cairn Energy of UK was the winner of the other such block.

Of the 28 shallow water blocks on offer, 13 received bids. BHP Billiton Petroleum won three, while ONGC got five of these as lead partner and one where Oil India was the operator. Cairn Energy got a KG basin offshore block.

As regards 18 onland blocks offered, bids were received for 15, four of which went to ONGC. Other winners include Jubilant, Oil India, NTPC and Esveegee Steel.

The CCEA, acting on the recommendation of an Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ECS) that screened the bids, rejected Deep Energy's offer for onland blocks in view of "very low percentage share of profit to the government," he said.

Award of one block was kept in abeyance pending more scrutiny of networth of the bidder, officials said.

Chidambaram said the CCEA also approved cancellation of award of two exploration blocks in the previous NELP-VII round to GeoGlobal Resources and one to Interlink Petroleum, Moonstone Energy and EnSearch as they had failed to sign production sharing contract (PSC) despite extensions.

ONGC won seven deep-sea blocks-- five as the sole operator, one as a joint operator with Oil India Ltd and one with the BG Group of UK as the operator.

Its other partners in deep-water blocks included Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC), GAIL India, NTPC and Andhra Pradesh Gas Infrastructure Corp. Shallow water blocks had Indian Oil Corp and Adani Welspun Exploration Ltd as additional partners.

In all, ONGC won 17 blocks -- in 14 as operator and three as non-operator, he said. In the previous seven rounds too, ONGC had won almost half of the 203 blocks awarded.

Out of 70 oil and gas blocks and 10 coal bed methane (CBM) blocks offered, bids were received for only 44 areas.

Officials said the award of CBM blocks would be taken up by the CCEA later, after issues with certain bids are sorted out by the Law Ministry.