NELP-VII has 57 blocks: 18 new, 24 recycled, 15 repeaters

It has only 18 new blocks on offer, but India expects to attract at least $3.5 billion investment in its Seventh Round of offer of blocks under the New Exploration...

It has only 18 new blocks on offer, but India expects to attract at least $3.5 billion investment in its Seventh Round of offer of blocks under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), which was launched today. Billing it the country’s largest offer, petroleum and natural gas minister Deora announced 57 oil and gas exploration blocks — nine in shallow water, 19 in deep-sea and 29 onland under the NELP-VII, bids for which will close on April 11 next year.

However, his officials later clarified that of these, 24 blocks were recycled ones from previous rounds and 15 were those that did not attract any bids in the earlier offerings. Despite this, the minister said that he expected a good response, considering the amendments in the bid evaluation criteria that encourage small and medium exploration and production companies.

One such dispensation is introduction of small — Type S — blocks of size up to 200 km where small investors would be attracted by removing the technical capability criteria for selecting a firm. Another inducement is to make this technical capability a pre-qualification, and not a bid evaluation criterion, for award of onland and shallow water blocks.

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For deep sea blocks, the Government has fixed a ‘consortium approach’ as it wants domestic companies to tie up with experienced foreign players. “When we opened the eastern offshore, we had tremendous gas finds. Now, we are opening the western offshore and we want experienced companies with proven track records to come in,” Deora reasoned.

India has in the previous six rounds of NELP awarded 162 blocks with an investment commitment over three phases of exploration and production totalling $8.33 billion. Of this, the largest commitment of $3.32 billion was received in NELP-VI, where 52 out of 55 blocks on offer were grabbed.

Under NELP, 49 oil and gas discoveries have already been made in Cambay onland, the North-East Coast and the Krishna Godavari deepwater areas, accreting over 600 million tonnes of reserves.

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