India's state-owned ONGC bid for the most number of upstream oil and gas blocks in the country's latest licensing round, which attracted only three bidders overall.
The company bid for 19 of the 21 blocks and was the sole bidder for 16 of them offered for exploration and development in the sixth round under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy's (HELP) Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP), according to the country's Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
State-run Oil India and private-sector Sun Petrochemicals were the other two bidders.
The blocks are expected to be awarded by the end of November and anticipated to generate immediate exploration work commitments of around $300-400mn, the oil ministry said in August. India imports about 84pc of its crude needs and has been trying to increase domestic crude production to reduce its import dependence.
The country has already awarded 105 blocks spanning a total area of about 157,000 km² in the last five OALP rounds, with private-sector resources company Vedanta winning 51 of those. Vedanta did not bid in the latest round.
The DGH has also reduced the number of approvals required for exploration projects to 18 from 37 in an attempt to make it easier to develop the upstream sector, which is likely to reduce planning times and lead to an increase in production. The OALP guarantees marketing and pricing freedom with a revenue-sharing model.
