The Indian government plans to auction 69 small and marginal oil and gas fields to private companies, including 27 fields off Mumbai (with estimated oil reserves of about 15 Mt), 15 in the Krishna Godavari basin and 10 in the Assam Shelf. These discoveries were given up by two companies, Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) and Indian Oil Ltd. (OIL), that were unable to develop them. The small fields hold about 50.8 Mt of oil and 53.5 bcm of gas, with the biggest discovery, the D-18 field in Mumbai Offshore, holding 14.8 Mt of oil reserves. They will be auctioned with a new revenue sharing regime, that will replace the controversial Production Sharing Contract (PSC) model. Operators will win a 20-year license and will be allowed to carry out exploration throughout the life of the license. Production will have to start three years from the contract signing date for onshore fields, four years for offshore fields and six years for the two deep-sea fields.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.