India’s Oil and Natural Gas (ONGC) has invited bids from companies for handing over operations of 43 small and marginal oil and gas fields in order to enhance production.
ONGC has clustered the 43 onland fields into 11 contract areas that will be bid out to companies offering the highest oil and gas output on top of a pre-decided baseline.
ONGC had in June 2019 invited similar bids for 64 fields that were clustered into 17 contract areas. The bid round did not evoke much interest and failed.
The fields on offer have a total in-place oil and oil equivalent gas volume of about 160 million ton. These contract areas are spread across the states of Gujarat, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
The 64 fields offered in 2019 held a cumulative 300 million tonne of oil and oil equivalent natural gas reserves.
India aims to cut dependence on oil imports by 10 percent by 2022 from 77 percent in 2014-15. But the dependence has only increased and is now over 83 percent.
The last date for bidding is December 3.
A pre-bid conference will be held on October 20, 2021.
ONGC said operators will have complete marketing and pricing freedom to sell hydrocarbons on an arm’s length basis through competitive bidding.
Partner will be selected on a revenue-sharing basis. Revenue will be shared on incremental production over and above the baseline production under business-as-usual (BAU) scenario.
The contract period will be for 15 years with an option to extend by 5 years.
A reduction of 10 percent in the royalty rate for incremental production of natural gas over and above BAU scenario will be offered.