The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has launched the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) Bid Round-VII for international competitive bidding.
The bids can be submitted through a dedicated online e-bidding portal till 15 February 2022. Award of these blocks is likely be completed by the end of March 2022.
Successful award of Round-VII Blocks will add further 15,766 sq km of exploration acreage and cumulative acreage under OALP will be increased to 2,07,692 sq km.
The blocks on offer of OALP Bid Round-VII is RJ-ONHP-2021/1 (486.39 sq km), AA-ONHP-2021/2 (382.05 sq km), SR-ONHP-2021/1 (906.43 sq km), CB-OSHP-2021/2 (1,234.42 sq km), CY-UDWHP-2021/1 (8,108.69 km), AS-ONHP-2021/2 (2,445.30 sq km), AS-ONHP-2021/3 (1,840.87 sq km), and CB-OSHP-2021/3 (361.85 sq km).
The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) was approved in March 2016. In continuation to its determination for reduction in import dependency of oil and gas and accelerating E&P activities, the government notified the further policy reforms in Exploration and Licensing Policy in February, 2019.
The focus was shifted from revenue to production maximization. Since the launch of HELP on 30 March 2016, five rounds of OALP have been concluded for 105 E&P blocks; award of 21 blocks under sixth round of OALP is under progress. These 126 blocks comprise about 1,91,926 sq km of area spread across 18 sedimentary basins.
Eight blocks under present bid round are spread across six sedimentary basins and include five on land blocks (four in Category-I Basins and one in Category-III Basin), two shallow water blocks (both in Category-I Basin) and one ultra-deep water block (Category-I Basin).
It is expected that OALP Round-VII would generate immediate exploration work commitment of around USD 300-400 million.
The Hydrocarbon Exploration & Licensing Policy (HELP), which adopts the revenue sharing contract model, is a significant step towards improving the ease of doing business in the Indian exploration and production (E&P) sector.
It comes with attractive and liberal terms like reduced royalty rates, no oil cess, marketing and pricing freedom, round the year bidding, freedom to investors for carving out blocks of their interest, a single license to cover both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, exploration permission during the entire contract period, and an easy, transparent and swift bidding and awarding process.
The XIIth window for submission of expressions of interest (EoIs) is currently open till 31 March 2022.
