Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas & Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday launched NIO and MRSC for Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) Bid Round-II. Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dr M.M. Kutty and DG, DGH V.P Joy were also present on the occasion. In this bid round, 14 E&P blocks, with an area of approximately 30,000 sq. km., are being offered for bidding to the investor community under the investor friendly HELP regime.
10 blocks are based on Expressions of Interest submitted by the bidders, and 4 blocks have been carved out by the Government based on data received through the National Seismic Programme and the Resource Reassessment Study carried out by the Government.
Speaking on the occasion, Pradhan said that the energy requirement of the country is increasing very fast, and we are mainly dependent on imports for fulfilling our fuel and transportation fuel requirements. E&P sector has been a challenge, and the Government has undertaken a large number of reforms to bring in more investment and increase domestic production. Almost 60,000 sq km area was offered under OALP Bid round I and 30,000 sq km more is being offered under the second round, while the third round is almost ready.
He said that earlier the decision about exploration was based on the potential Government revenue, but didn’t yield much results. Now, the Government is working to increase production. For this purpose, IOR/EOR has been announced, production enhancement contract model is being worked out.
The Minister said that more fiscal incentives will be given for increasing the production, and difficult fields will be given special incentives. Pradhan said that more transparency has been brought about in policy making and stakeholders are being consulted.
He said that National oil companies will be encouraged to increase production, but at the same time, they will have to be more accountable and responsible. The minister called for setting up of Indian standards for petroleum with respect to quality, safety and other aspects which should usher in innovations.
He expressed the hope that the investors will whole-heartedly participate in the bidding rounds, bringing in more investments, creating jobs and improving self-sufficiency and scientific capacity. India is 3rd largest energy consumer in the world and likely to have one of the fastest growing energy demand of the world in the coming years.
As a step to meet this growing demand and in line with Prime Minister’s vision of achieving Energy Security and Sufficiency, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has steered a plethora of reforms in the recent past years.
The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) replacing the erstwhile New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) was approved in March 2016 and the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) along with the National Data Repository (NDR) were launched in June 2017 as the key drivers to accelerate the Exploration and Production (E&P) activities in India.
The programme envisages six monthly periodic bidding rounds starting from July 1, 2017. The first bidding round under OALP (Bid Round I) was launched in January 2018 and closed in May 2018 and 55 blocks covering 59,282 sq. km. area were awarded in October 2018.
The Government is also in advanced stages of finalizing the OALP Bid Round III with approximately 32,000 sq. km. of area and the bidding is expected to be launched within next few weeks.