2nd round of oil field auction soon: Pradhan

India will soon launch the second round of auction of discovered oil and gas fields of state- owned ONGC and Oil India Ltd, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said today.
As contracts for 31 small discovered oil and gas fields auctioned in the first bid round in more than six years were signed, he said a nation that is 80 per cent import dependent cannot afford to see its largest lease holder sit idle.
"There has to be accountability (for ONGC)," he said at the signing ceremony.
The government, he said, is also looking at giving incentives for enhanced and improved oil recovery schemes to help reverse the declining trend in output from ageing fields.

"Discovered Small Fields (DSF) round-II is coming soon," he said.
Also, on cards is production enchancement contract (PEC) for producing fields of ONGC where operations can be outsourced after setting a minimum benchmark output level.

State-owned oil firms IOC, BPCL and HPCL cornered a third of the fields whose contracts were signed today.
Touted as an auction round that would replicate the shale gas revolution of the US, half of the fields went to new and lesser known entrants like engineering company Megha Engineering & Infrastructure, KEI-RSOS Petroleum, Enquest Drilling and Nippon Power.
These fields, which hold in-place reserves of 62 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas, can cumulatively produce a peak of around 15,000 barrels of oil per day and 2 million standard cubic meters per day of gas, Pradhan said.

The peak oil and gas output envisaged is about 2 per cent of India's current oil and gas production.
"It has been estimated that the indicative gross revenue over economic life would be approximately Rs 46,400 crore of which royalty collection and government's revenue share is expected to be around Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 9,300 crore, respectively," the minister said.
In all 46 idle fields, which were taken away from state- owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL), were put on bidding in DSF-I. 34 of them received bids.
Of these, 14 were single bids. All the 26 onland areas had received bids, although 9 had only single bidders.

"We have completed the DSF-I in just under 10 months time from the date it was launched in May last year," Pradhan said.
The last auction of oil and gas acreage happened in 2009-10.