Govt launches 9th round of oil, gas blocks for bidding, ONGC wins big

In the ninth bid round, 28 blocks, with an area of approximately 136,000 square kilometres, are on offer for bidding

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) on Wednesday won seven of the 10 areas for exploration of oil and gas, while a consortium of Reliance Industries Ltd and BP Plc, Oil India Limited, and Sun Petrochemicals Pvt Ltd walked away with one each in the latest bid round.

The Centre opened the ninth round of bidding under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP IX) for the oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) sector.

In the ninth round of bidding, 28 blocks with an area of approximately 136,000 square km, are on offer for bidding.

Out of these, 23 blocks are based on Expressions of Interest (EoIs) received from companies from April 2022 to March 2023, while five were carved out by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).

The 28 blocks under the present round are spread across eight sedimentary basins and include nine onland blocks, eight shallow water blocks, and 11 ultra-deepwater blocks.

Five companies -- ONGC, Vedanta Ltd, Oil India Ltd, Sun Petrochemicals Pvt Ltd and Reliance-BP Exploration (Alpha) Ltd -- put in 13 bids for the 10 blocks on offer in OALP-VIII, according to the DGH.

On Wednesday, the government also signed contracts for 10 blocks awarded under the OALP VIII bid round and three Coal Bed Methane (CBM) blocks awarded under Special CBM Bid Round-SCBM 2022.

The 10 blocks offered under this round comprised an area of 34,364 square km spread across nine sedimentary basins.

A total of 13 bids were received for the 10 blocks. The estimated investment in awarded blocks for the committed exploration work programme is about $233 million.

Under the Special CBM Round-2022, 16 CBM blocks were offered for bidding, which spread across seven states covering an area of 5,817 square km.

A total of six bids were received for three blocks with an area of 717 square km. These three blocks were awarded to two companies.

The estimated investments in the awarded blocks for the committed exploration work programme are to the tune of $7.4 million.

The first seven OALP Bid Rounds led to an award of 134 blocks, covering an area of about 2.07 lakh square km, to leading E&P companies.

Now, with 10 more blocks being awarded under Round VIII, a total of 144 exploratory blocks have been awarded under the Hydrocarbon Exploration & Licensing Policy (HELP) regime, covering an area of 2,42,055 square km.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that currently, only 10 per cent of the sedimentary basin area is under active exploration.

However, with more areas coming under exploration, it is estimated that after the awarding of blocks under forthcoming OALP-IX and X Bid Rounds, about 560,000 square km area will come under exploration by the end of 2024, the minister added.