Centre opens bids for 8 blocks to accelerate hydrocarbon exploration under 7th round of OALP

The bids can be submitted through a dedicated online e-bidding portal till 1200 hours on February 15, 2022 and the blocks will be awarded by March 2022, said a senior Petroleum Ministry official.

This would add 15,766 square km of exploration acreage and increase the cumulative acreage to 207,692 sq. km, he said.

The OALP round seven is expected to generate an immediate exploration work commitment of around USD 300-400 million.

The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) got approved in March 2016, and its policy reforms were notified in February 2019 to maximize domestic production and boost in house exploration.

After HELP's presence, five rounds of OALP have been concluded for 105 E&P blocks and the award of 21 blocks under its sixth round is under progress.

In total, these 126 blocks comprise about 191,926 sq km. of area spread across 18 sedimentary basins. Eight blocks under the present bid round are spread across six sedimentary basins.

e include five onland blocksThes, of which four are in category-I basins and one is in category-III basin and there are two shallow water blocks, both of which are in category-I basin and one ultra deep water block is in category-I basin, the Ministry said.

To improve the ‘ease of doing business’ in the E&P sector, the policy tweak while adopting the revenue sharing contract model, now comes with attractive and liberal terms like reduced royalty rates, no oil cess, marketing and pricing freedom, round the year bidding and freedom to investors for carving out blocks of their interest, the Ministry claimed.