(ET)
India’s upstream petroleum regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) has received as many as 45 Expressions of Interest (EoI) in a little over a month for various fields to be bid out under the mega oil and gas auctions in what analysts called an “encouraging response”.
The oil ministry had made the auction live on 1 July, offering over 85 percent of the country’s 3.14 million square kilometres of hydrocarbon sedimentary area under a new bidding mechanism – Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) — and a revamped Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP). “One can call this success if we take into account the number of EOIs submitted in a month’s time. It may be too early to reveal anything else on this matter, though,” a senior DGH official told ETEnergyWorld. He declined to comment on the areas for which EOI have been submitted and players which have applied for the blocks, citing confidentiality.