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MNCs smell oil in India
Pradeep Puri in New Delhi |
July 30, 2003 08:42 IST
The recent gas discovery by Reliance in the Krishna-Godavari basin has generated unprecedented interest among multinational oil majors in the fourth round of bidding under the new exploration licensing policy.
These multinationals, which have hitherto been ignoring Indian exploration blocks offered under the first three rounds of NELP, have been flocking to the three data centres at Houston, London and New Delhi to study the prospects of the exploration acreage on offer.
The major oil companies that have visited the data centres include Occidental, Exxon Mobil, Statoil, Woodside Energy, Chevron Texaco, BP and ENI of Italy, besides two Russian companies and some Australian firms. Many of these companies had not visited these centres in the earlier three rounds of NELP bidding.
However, sources in the directorate-general of hydrocarbons say not many data packages have so far been purchased by the prospective bidders.
They added that previous experiences showed most of the companies bought these packages only a week before the bids were closed so that their competitors did not know that they were interested in a particular block.
Official sources said the renewed interest in Indian blocks had been triggered by the Reliance discovery and a string of successful discoveries by Cairn Energy. Moreover, the improved quality of data prepared by the directorate-general of hydrocarbons has also helped attract prospective investors to the centres.
Under NELP-IV, the government has invited bids for 24 oil and gas exploration blocks -- 11 onland, 12 deepwater and one shallow water. The 11 onland blocks are located in Assam, Bihar, Manipur, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Tripura (one each), Tamil Nadu (two) and Gujarat (three).
The 12 deepwater blocks are located on both the east coast (eight blocks) and the west coast (four). One shallow water block is located on the east coast.
Two prospective blocks in the Andaman deepwaters have also been offered for the first time. The bids will be closed on September 30.
After the closing of bids, their evaluation is expected to take another two months and Cabinet approval one month. Therefore, the blocks are likely to be finally awarded by December 31.