CCEA nod likely for farming out 67% of oil blocks in January

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) is likely to award around 31 oil and gas blocks to various bidders out of 46 contract areas (or 67 per cent) which were put on offer. A final nod for awarding the contract areas to the selected bidders in discovered small and marginal field (DSF) auction will happen only by the third week of January. 
 

Earlier, the Dharmendra Pradhan-led ministry had indicated that the fields were likely to be allotted to the parties concerned by the end of December. According to sources close to the development, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), an arm of the petroleum and natural gas ministry, which was conducting the bidding, has already forwarded the list of selected bidders to the ministry of petroleum. The ministry is likely to move the Cabinet for its final clearance by the third week of January. Forty-two companies took part in the current round of auction for the small and marginal fields, of which
 
37 were private companies. The 46 contract areas on offer got a total 134 e-bids and had an estimated reserves of 88 million tonnes of oil equivalent, which, if produced, can cut down India’s oil import bill by Rs 3,500 crore annually.
 
After the scrutiny of bids, at least 31 blocks are likely to be awarded to bidders for development.
 
Among the major companies that participated in the bidding process are state-run Indian Oil Corporation, Anil Agarwal-led Cairn India, Oil India, GAIL India, Bharat Petro Resources, Adani Welspun Exploration and Hindustan Oil Exploration Company. On the other hand, a lot of new companies such as Dilip Shanghvi’s Sun Petrochemicals and Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group got much attention during the bidding process, which closed on November 21.