Oil majors keen to bid for licences

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 12. Several international oil majors such as Shell, BP-Amoco, British Gas and Japan National Oil Company are expected to participate in the second round of bidding for oil blocks that closes on March 31. These companies were absent in the first round of bids under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) that received a lukewarm response.

Fresh from a four-nation tour to meet potential investors, the Union Petroleum Minister, Mr. Ram Naik, claimed the response from these companies and his one-to-one clarificatory meetings with their representatives in London, Houston, Tokyo and Singapore had indicated an encouraging response to NELP-II. In fact, anticipating active bidding for the 25 blocks on offer, Mr. Naik was emphatic that there would no extension of the last date for bids. Other leading companies such as Marathon, Texaco, Petrobas and Pertamina had also shown interest, he added.

The Minister had estimated the bids to touch $2 billion while interacting with newspersons overseas. At a news conference here today, he was more circumspect but remained hopeful due to several reasons - the tenders have been put on a web site that has already received as many as 5,700 hits; the entire data are in the digitalised form thus reducing the time for companies to evaluate proposals; and, several contractual conditions have been altered based on the feedback from NELP-I. Also, the acreage available under the NELP was for the first time in the West Coast deep water areas and in the oil rich states of Assam and Gujarat.

The Minister said NELP-III could be expected around December this year but before this, the Ministry was planning to invite applications for exploration of the first block of coal bed methane (CBM) blocks within three months.

Since coal mining is a state subject, concurrence of states where coal is extensively mined is a pre-requisite. So far, the Centre has received the assent of West Bengal and Gujarat state government while the Jharkhand Chief Minister, Mr. Babu Lal Marandi, is scheduled to meet Mr. Naik within a fortnight to discuss the issue.

Mr. Naik said ONGC Videsh's plan to invest Rs. 8,000 crores in the Sakhalin oil fields in Russia will give a boost to the country's quest to receive ``equity oil''. Another step in this direction is the tie up being processed in Vietnam for joint exploration of gas. Results from this JV could be expected sooner, perhaps by middle of next year as against the projected date of 2005-06 for the Sakhalin project.

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Section  : Business
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