The Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has offered 23 oil and gas blocks across 12 sedimentary basins for bidding in the third round of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP). Out of these, 5 are coal bed methane blocks. The round is slated to last until 10 April 2019 and will run concurrently with OALP-II, where 14 blocks are also offered for bidding.
The last OALP round was launched in 2017 and bids closed in May 2018. India-based private owned mining company Vedanta bagged 41 out of the 55 oil and gas exploration blocks offered, while state-run companies Oil India and ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation) won 9 and 2 blocks, respectively. State-run GAIL (the upstream arm of Bharat Petroleum Corporation) and Hindustan Petroleum were awarded 1 block each. Out of the nine Indian companies that participated in the technical bidding process, five were public sector units, while four were private companies.
The OALP procedure was implemented under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP). It allows interested bidders to put in expression of interest (EoI) for prospecting oil and gas potential in an area that presently does not belong to any production or exploration license. OALP rounds are expected to help India to cut its fuel import dependency to 10% by 2022 and up to 50% by 2030.
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