Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) bagged exploration rights in seven areas for oil and gas, while a consortium led by Reliance Industries Ltd and BP Plc obtained rights in one area during the latest bidding round. Hardeep Singh Puri, oil minister, announced that a total of ten blocks for oil and gas exploration and production were offered in the eighth round of the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP-VIII). The bidding process, initiated in July 2022, saw the participation of five companies: ONGC, Vedanta Ltd, Oil India Ltd (OIL), Sun Petrochemicals Pvt Ltd, and Reliance-BP Exploration (Alpha) Ltd.
Despite multiple bid deadline extensions, the round concluded in July 2023. Out of the ten blocks available, seven received single bids from ONGC, and the remaining three had two bidders each. Global players such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies, whom the government wanted to attract for exploration and production, did not submit any bids. ONGC emerged as the sole bidder for six blocks, while Reliance-BP secured the ultra-deep sea block in the Krishna Godavari basin as the sole bidder.
Out of the ten blocks, ONGC successfully won seven, having bid for nine in total. The government’s strategy to encourage exploration by opening up more acreage aims to enhance India’s oil and gas production, ultimately reducing the substantial $222 billion spent on oil imports. As reported by millenniumpost, the open acreage policy, introduced in 2016, departed from the previous government-centric block identification and bidding approach.
