Mexico, which has opened its acreages to foreign companies for exploring hydrocarbon reserves after an over

75-year hiatus, is seeking support from India’s upstream regulator, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), to build a National Data Repository (NDR).

In a recent communication to BN Talukdar, director general of DGH, Juan Carlos Zepeda Molina, President of the National Hydrocarbon Commission (CNH) in Mexico, said the Latin American nation wants to set up the NDR in 2014.

“During our investigation, we came across your project and noticed that your are in a more advanced stage than us. Taking into account your experience in this type of projects, the main reason of this communication is to request institutional collaboration between our organisations in order to share information and best practices regarding regulation, operation, data administration and standards as well as financial management of these type of databases,? Molina wrote to Talukdar.

The DGH has awarded a contract to set up the NDR to HLS Asia (HLSA), which has a collaboration with US-based Halliburton Energy Services. The company was awarded the contract in March this year. It will take a year to set up infrastructure and another year to feed data into the system.

?India has agreed to help Mexico set up the NDR and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) would be signed between CNH and DGH shortly,? a senior petroleum ministry official told FE.

The purpose of the MoU would be to allow DGH and CNH to develop terms of cooperation in order to exchange information, knowledge, initiatives, technologies, procedures and research work, based on the principles of reciprocity, equality and mutual benefit.

To make India a favourable destination for exploration, the government plans to move to the open acreage licensing policy (OALP) regime soon. This will enable upstream companies to bid for oil and gas blocks without waiting for a bidding announcement, as under the new exploration licensing policy (NELP) regime. The idea was floated many years ago when Murli Deora was petroleum minister.

The DGH office in Noida will host the NDR. The government had amended Rule 19 of petroleum and natural gas rules to enable DGH obtain all the data from various operators or licensees, which could be disclosed to prospective bidders as and when required under the open acreage system.

In addition, ONGC Videsh (OVL), the overseas subsidiary of state-run ONGC, is in discussions with Petr?leos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the national oil company of Mexico, for a tie-up to pick up equity in exploration and production assets in the Latin American nation.

OVL is understood to have shown interest in picking up stakes in the ?round zero? of acreages offered in July (similar to pre-NELP rounds held by India). Another ?round 0.5? would be announced in November while first round of auctioning is expected next year. Currently, Mexico is offering both onland and offshore blocks and OVL has already had a few rounds of discussion with PEMEX.

Bloomberg quoted Mexico?s energy minister Joaquin Coldwell saying the fields hold an estimated 20.6 billion barrels, enough to maintain production levels of at least 2.5 million barrels a day for the next 20 years.