Indian private-sector resources firm Vedanta has offered to sell 90,000 bpd of crude to domestic refiners from two oil blocks it operates in west India.
Vedanta is offering to sell 82,000 bpd produced at its RJ block in Barmer, Rajasthan state and another 8,000 bpd from its Cambay block in Gujarat state. The crude being offered by Vedanta accounts for around 16pc of India's 570,000 bpd production in the April 2021-March 2022 fiscal year.
Deliveries from both blocks will start from 1 April 2023 until 31 March 2024. The price for the crude sold will be benchmarked to dated Brent prices, Vedanta said.
India in July 2022 allowed domestic crude producers from fields awarded before 1999 freedom to sell their production in the domestic market but continued to ban exports. The government earlier fixed the buyers for oil produced from older fields. Only state-controlled, private-sector and joint-venture refiners in India are eligible to participate in the competitive bidding process, according to the RFP documents.
The Cambay Block CB/OS-2 was awarded in 1998 under a production-sharing agreement (PSA) to a joint venture of Vedanta, state-controlled upstream firm ONGC and domestic private-sector firm Invenire Petrodyne. The PSA for the Barmer Block RJ-ON-90/1 in 1995 went to a joint venture of Vedanta, ONGC and Vedanta subsidiary Cairn Energy Hydrocarbon.
