Despite postponing the last date of bid submission twice, the government has failed to attract leading global majors in its seventh round of Nelp auction, where 57 oil and gas exploration blocks were offered. An evaluation of the data reveals that out of the 57 blocks on offer, no bids have been received for as many as 12 exploration blocks and only a single bid has been received for 19 other blocks.
BHP Billiton and British Petroleum are the only two new entrants while oil and gas majors like Chevron and ExxonMobil have opted to stay out. The Nelp-VII round incidentally happens to be the largest ever auction of oil and gas blocks by the government.
In all, a total of 181 bids from 96 Indian and foreign companies were received from companies, including ONGC, Reliance Industries, GVK, Essar, BP Plc and BHP Billiton, for the blocks. State-owned ONGC is the only company to have bid aggressively and companies familiar with the Indian exploration scene like BG and Focus Energy are missing.
Even companies like Cairn Energy and Reliance, the two most successful companies in the Indian oil and gas space, have also decided to play safe and have submitted bids for limited blocks.
Few small sized blocks in the Cambay block, for which the criteria was relaxed by the DGH, got 17 bids each from many small, medium and large companies.
However, many companies that have participated in the bidding process are unknown ones and include Vasundhara Resources, Pan Orient, Sawala Enterprises and the likes. At the time of going to press, while the DGH officials were still opening the bids, sources said that BHP Billiton along with its Indian partner GVK is likely to get six blocks while BP along with Reliance has got one deep water block in the Krishna-Godavari basin (KG-DWN-2005/2). Reliance is also learnt to have got three more blocks.
The latest round of bids has, however, closed under the cloud of finance ministry insisting that the term mineral oil for the purpose of tax holidays includes production of only crude oil and accompanying natural gas would not be considered. The finance ministry, on its part, clarified that the issue whether natural gas is included in the expression ?mineral oil? is sub-judice and it would only be appropriate to allow the courts to resolve the issue.