New Delhi: In a bid to boost oil and gas production in the country, the Centre on Wednesday announced the auction of 46 small discovered oil and gas fields, which are expected to hold hydrocarbon reserves worth Rs 70,000 crores.
These oil and gas fields were “given-up” by state-owned ONGC and Oil India. This is the first auction to be conducted in four years and bidders will enjoy pricing and marketing freedom.
Bids are being invited for developing and monetising these contract areas having 625 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas in-place volumes spread over onland, shallow water and deepwater areas.
Discovered small fields are oil and gas blocks, which have so far remained commercially undeveloped, but are now in focus as the Central government seeks to boost domestic hydrocarbon production.
Domestic and international roadshows for the auction will begin on June 6 and e-bidding will start on July 15 and close on October 31. Bids will be finalised by mid-November and contracts signed by January 2017.
This is the first set of blocks to be offered after the Cabinet this year approved replacing the controversial Production Sharing Contract (PSC) with a simpler revenue-sharing regime for all oil and gas field auctions.
“Unfortunately, the PSC regime has witnessed several litigations and arbitrations, most of them related to issues emanating from key PSC provisions such as cost recovery, work programme, operational, administrative and regulatory inflexibility. Apart from adversely affecting India’s domestic oil and gas output, such disputes have also hurt India’s image as a serious E&P destination,” said petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
