Investment: $2.35bn in 4 years

Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry has awarded all seven onshore blocks to Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) under revenue sharing contracts covering 18,510 square km across three sedimentary basins.

The seven blocks have resource potential of approximately 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent gas, said Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at the contract signing ceremony in Delhi on 2 Jan 2020.

“Energy sector will witness huge investments in coming years,” said the Minister highlighting the Rs.102 lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline 2019-25 report.

The 94 blocks under four Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) Bid Rounds till date will generate an investment of approximately US$2.35 billion over next 3 to 4 years in exploratory work alone.

Exploration & Production Companies of the OALP blocks Bid Rounds till date.

The operators of these blocks, covering 136,790 sq km, have since then initiated petroleum exploration activities or are in final stages of obtaining Petroleum Exploration Licenses (PELs).

With the successful roll out of the HELP/OALP regime, based on the world-class National Data Repository (NDR), the Government has achieved massive enhancement of exploration acreage in India.

The exploration acreage, which stood at approximately 80,000 sq. km. in 2019 from earlier regimes, has now been enhanced to approximately 215,000 sq km after 4 rounds of OALP.

The cumulative exploratory work commitment after the 4 rounds of OALP comprise 29,270-line km of 2D Seismic Survey, 43,272 sq km of 3D Seismic Survey, 369 Exploratory Wells and 290 Core Analysis to establish Shale Resources.

The 5th cycle of submitting Expressions of Interest (EoIs) closed on 30 November 2019 and currently the 6th cycle of EoI is open till 31 March 2020. fiinews.com