The Centre on Tuesday launched an Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) Bid Round-VII for international competitive bidding to add its oil acreage blocks by 15,766 square kilometers.

The bids can be submitted through a dedicated online e-bidding portal till February 15, 2022 and the blocks would be awarded by the end of March 2022. The Successful award of Round-VII Blocks would further add 15,766 sq. km of exploration acreage and cumulative acreage under OALP would be increased to  207,692 sq. km, said a senior officer of the Petroleum Ministry.

The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) was approved in March 2016 and notified its new exploration policy in February 2019 so as to increase in house exploration and reduce import dependency of oil and gas and accelerate Exploration and production (E&P) activities.

In its new policy, Centre had shifted its focus from ‘revenue’ generation to ‘production’ maximization’ and to ensure greater transparency in allotment procedures, the ministry said.

Since the launch of HELP, five rounds of OALP have been concluded for 105 E&P blocks, awarded 21 blocks and 21 more in the sixth round of OLAP These 126 blocks comprise about 191,926 sq.km. of area spread across 18 sedimentary basins, the Ministry said.

The new 8 blocks, where bids were invited, four are in category I basin and one in Category Eight blocks under present bid round are spread across 6 Sedimentary Basins and include five Onland blocks (four in Category-I Basins and one in Category-III Basin), two shallow Water blocks (both in Category-I  Basin) and one Ultra Deep Water block (Category-I Basin).

“It is expected that OALP Round VII would generate an immediate exploration work commitment of around USD 300-400 million. The Hydrocarbon Exploration & Licensing Policy (HELP), which adopts the Revenue Sharing Contract model, is a significant step towards improving the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ in the Indian Exploration and Production (E&P) sector,” the officer said.

The Ministry claimed that the new Bidding process has come with attractive and liberal terms mainly reduced royalty rates, no Oil Cess, marketing and pricing freedom, round the year bidding, freedom to investors for carving out blocks of their interest, and a single license to cover both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources.