India Liberalises Exploration Regime
Indian oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan June 28 launched the National Data Repository (NDR) and Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP), a database of sedimentary basins that will allow parties to bid for an area without waiting for formal bidding.
India launched a licensing round last year and companies are now able to make open bidding throughout the year.
“National Data Repository has come forth as an integrated data repository of E&P data of the Indian sedimentary basins," said Pradhan: "We expect Open Acreage Licensing to accelerate exploration activities in the country since investors can express their interest in an area which they feel has prospective without waiting for formal bidding."
He said that with the experience of several litigations and limited encouraging production output from New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) rounds, the ministry decided not to go for incremental policy change but to have a completely new policy.
Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licencing Policy (HELP), which was launched last year, is an outcome of this, Pradhan added.
Exploration and production sector has remained a main focus area for the Modi government, as it tries to move towards the target of reducing import dependence by 10% by 2022. The government has embarked on sectoral reforms such as gas price reform, streamlining CBM sector and holding Discovered Small Field rounds, to name a few.
The minister said that as much as 52% of India’s sedimentary basins are still unappraised and the last seismic data acquisition of the unappraised sedimentary basins was undertaken by the government nearly 25 years ago. Thus, the National Seismic Program was started last year.
Pradhan said that the government is also working proactively on a number of other fronts to make the upstream sector vibrant. The government is also coming up with new policies on EOR-IOR, production enhancement contract, shale oil & gas policy for NELP and pre-NELP blocks, next set of PSC reforms, and a second bidding round under Discovered Small Field policy.
"I urge the potential investors in this new bidding regime to come ahead with the new approach. We have diligently striven to make Indian E&P sector attractive for investors. We realise that Indian companies need to partner with the world’s leading E&P players, and that we need to deploy the world’s foremost technologies available to fully unlock the potential of Indian upstream sector," Pradhan said.
Shardul Sharma