The Hindu : Business : Centre receives 54 bids for coal bed methane blocks in third round

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Saturday, Jul 01, 2006

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Centre receives 54 bids for coal bed methane blocks in third round

Special Correspondent

ADAG and Reliance Industries among 18 domestic contenders; 8 foreign cos. in fray

NEW DELHI: The Union Government has received 54 bids for extracting natural gas from coal seams, the highest ever in the scheme for exploration of coal bed methane (CBM) blocks. Among the companies which have submitted bids are Reliance Natural Resources of Anil Ambani and Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries. In addition, British Petroleum and a leading U.S. company in the CBM sector, CDX Gas, have made an entry for the first time.

Disclosing this here on Friday, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dinsha Patel, said the CBM-III round had attracted more bids than the earlier two rounds put together. CBM-1 received 16 bids from six Indian firms while CBM-II got 14 bids from seven Indian and one foreign company.

CBM-III attracted 18 Indian firms and eight foreign companies including Arrow Energy of Australia, CDX Gas of the U.S., Molopo of Australia, OMIMEX of the U.S., EIG of Australia, GeoPetrol of France and Coal Gas of the U.S.

ONGC-Indian Oil tie-up

Petroleum Ministry officials said CDX Gas bid for blocks in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. British Petroleum also bid for two CBM blocks in Jharkhand and West Bengal. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) tied up with the Indian Oil Corporation for two blocks and with Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) for another two. It also bid alone for the Jharkhand block. Essar Oil bid for seven blocks while state gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd tied up with Arrow Energy of Australia to bid for seven blocks. RNRL of Anil Ambani made joint bids with Reliance Energy and GeoPetrol of France for all the ten blocks on offer.

Officials told newspersons that contracts for all the ten CBM blocks would be awarded in two months and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) would be signed by October 31.

Mr. Patel said the Indian companies, which bid in CBM-III round included ONGC, RIL, RNRL, Essar Oil, Oil India Ltd, Shiv-Vani, Indiabulls, Great Eastern Energy Corporation, GAIL, Jindal Steel and Power, Jubilant Oil, IOC, Coal India, Adinath, GSPCL, Deep Industries and Tata Power. The Government has already signed 16 contracts for exploration and production of CBM including five contracts in CBM-I and 8 in CBM-II.

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