The Hindu : Nod for 23 oil exploration blocks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 26, 2002

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National

Nod for 23 oil exploration blocks

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 25. The Government today approved the award of nine oil and gas exploration blocks to a consortium of Reliance Industries Limited and Hardy Exploration and Production (India) Inc. out of the 23 blocks that were on offer under the third round of the New Exploration Licencing Policy (NELP).

Of the nine blocks, seven are deep water blocks and two shallow water blocks.

The deep water blocks are in Kerala-Konkan offshore (two), Cauvery-Palar offshore (two), Cauvery offshore (one), Palar offshore (one) and Krishna-Godavari offshore (one). Both the shallow water blocks are in the Krishna-Godavari shallow water area.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which took the decision late this evening, awarded nine more blocks out of the remaining 14 to the ONGC alone. Five of these blocks were onshore, three shallow and one deep water.

The onshore blocks are: Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura and Nagaland. The shallow water blocks are: two in Kerala-Konkan offshore and one in Gujarat-Saurashtra offshore.

The deep water block is also in the Kerala-Konkan offshore area. A consortium of ONGC-OIL has bagged the Cauvery offshore and Rajasthan and Assam onshore blocks, while the consortium of ONGC-IOC the Mizoram onshore block. The consortium of GSPCL-Geo-Global has won a deep water block in the Krishna-Godavari offshore area.

The Government had received 45 bids for the 23 blocks. The bid closed on August 28.

The Government had signed 47 contracts under the first two rounds of NELP and with the new award of 23 more blocks under the third round, the area covered under the NELP would come to about 0.76 million sq.km, or about 72 per cent of the total areas currently under exploration.

Announcing the CCEA decision, the spokesperson of the Government said the estimated investment in the 23 blocks under the NELP-III would be about $415 million (Rs. 2,035 crores) in phase-I exploration and about $1.05 billion (Rs. 5,150 crores) in all the three phases of exploration.

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