The Centre is planning to introduce the blocks given up by Reliance Industries (RIL) and Cairn India under the proposed New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) X round.
The NELP X is expected to the hit the market on January 15, coinciding with the biggest oil and gas event in India ?Petrotech.
?Out of the 86 planned and proposed blocks to be on offer under NELP X, we will try to bring the blocks relinquished by Cairn in Barmer and RIL?s part of block relinquished in KG-D6,? said Aramane Giridhar, joint secretary ? exploration, oil ministry.
According to industry officials, RIL has so far relinquished almost 16% of its D6 block in the prolific Krishna Godavari (KG) basin that can be picked up like hot cakes due to RIL’s past success in the block, which currently produces from two fields ? D1 and D3.
Similarly, prospects for the blocks relinquished by Cairn India too could be very high as Cairn’s five producing fields in the Barmer basin in Rajasthan together constitute India’s biggest onshore oil producing block.
In the last few years, Cairn has relinquished 2/3rds of its block with a total hydrocarbon bearing acreage of 3,150 square kilometres.
Giridhar said out of the 86 blocks proposed to be opened up under NELP X, 58 blocks have already been cleared by various ministries and efforts are for clearances of the rest so that the targetted number of 86 blocks could be achieved.
Vivek Rae, secretary, oil ministry said the government is expecting to bring in investments worth of $4-5 billion under the NELP X round, although the final figure will depend on a host of issues. Under the first nine rounds of NELP held so far since 1999, the government has managed to bring in investments of $21 billion, said Rae. FE had reported how India has so far nine producing sedimentary basins out of the total 26 prospective resources and of the total basins, only 45% of the area is either poorly explored or completely unexplored.
Under the total 254 blocks awarded under the nine NELP rounds, 50% of them are still at exploration stage and only three are producing.
