ONGC Wins 17 Oil And Gas Blocks In NELP-VIII Bid Round

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), in partnership with certain consortia members, has submitted bids for 25 oil and gas exploration blocks in NELP-VIII bid round and won 17 blocks. In respect of the deepwater blocks, ONGC had submitted seven bids and have won all of them. Of these seven blocks, one block is located in KG offshore and rest are in Andaman offshore.

ONGC is the operator in six blocks and a consortium partner in one block in KG-Offshore where BG Group Plc (BG Group) is the operator.

In another block, ONGC is a joint operator with Oil India Ltd (Oil India). ONGC consortia partners in these blocks are BG Group, Oil India, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (GSPC), GAIL (India) Limited, NTPC Limited and Andhra Pradesh Gas Infrastructure Corporation (APGIC).

In the shallow waters, ONGC submitted seven bids and won six out of them, in offshore areas of Kutch, Cauvery and Krishna-Godavari. Oil India is the operator for the Cauvery block, while in the other five blocks ONGC is the operator. ONGC’s consortia partners are Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC), Oil India, GSPC, NTPC, APGIC and Adani Welspun Exploration Ltd. (AWEL).

For the onland blocks, ONGC had submitted bid for 11 blocks and won four blocks; three as operator and one as consortia member where Oil India is the operator. ONGC’s consortia partners are Oil India and GSPC.

ONGC had also submitted bids for three CBM blocks offered under the CBM-IV round but none of the blocks were awarded to ONGC.

Commenting on the outcome of this bid round, R.S. Sharma, chief managing director, ONGC, observed that the overall response to the bid round has been on expected lines. Primarily, lack of investor interest for exploration across the world has been the reason for lower number of bids. Also, the lack of clarity on the likely gas price implementation and the taxation regime could have contributed to the below par response to the bidding round.

As regards the results relating to the blocks won by ONGC, Sharma expressed absolute satisfaction. “Strategically, we had targeted to win high risk- high return blocks and also the virgin areas in the exploration frontiers, especially in the deepwaters,” Sharma commented. “The results are in absolute conformity with our bidding strategy”.

ONGC has won almost 50% of the awarded blocks. ONGC has won 17 out of the 36 blocks for which results have been provisionally declared on October 12, 2009.