The Hindu : Business : Good response to exploration licensing programme

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 01, 2005

Business

Business

Good response to exploration licensing programme

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The fifth round of the new exploration licensing programme (NELP-V) had an "unprecedented response" with as many as 48 foreign and Indian companies making bid for 20 oil and gas blocks. Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar announced that 27 foreign companies have made bids, which is more than in all the previous rounds taken together. These include BP of the UK, Petronas of Malaysia, Petrobras of Brazil and ENI of Italy along with Reliance Industries and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India.

"It is a measure of the unprecedented response that bids for NELP-V are still being opened at the time of the conference and procedure is expected to continue well past midnight", Mr. Aiyar said. He said the maximum number of bids were made by Reliance for 12 blocks, while ONGC followed with bids for ten blocks. For the first time, bids have been received for all blocks on offer. Only three blocks — the two Karnataka-Konkan deepwater blocks and the Vindhyas block — received one bid each.

The maximum number of nine bids each were received for the Krishna-Godavari block and the Cambay onshore block II. Cambay onshore I received six bids, as in the case of Rajasthan onshore II and Assam-Arakan II.

Shell had to withdraw owing to financial reasons which, he said, had nothing to do with this country. Similarly, Chevron-Texaco had explained that it had to withdraw for certain specific reasons but continued to have an interest in oil and gas exploration in India. Mr. Aiyar said the awards for the blocks will be announced by July 31.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business