(PTI)
The government will on Monday sign contracts for the 31 small discovered oil and gas fields it had auctioned in the first bid round in more than six years.State-owned oil firms IOC, BPCL and HPCL had cornered a third of the fields whose award was confirmed by the Cabinet last month. “Contracts with successful bidders will be signed on March 27,” a senior official said.
Touted as an auction round that would replicate the shale gas revolution of the US, half of the fields went to new and lesser known entrants like engineering company Megha Engineering & Infrastructure, KEI-RSOS Petroleum, Enquest Drilling and Nippon Power.The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved award of 31 fields out of 34 that received bids in the auction that closed on November 21.
These fields, which hold in place reserves of 62 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas, can cumulatively produce a peak of around 15,000 barrels of oil per day and 2 million standard cubic meters per day of gas, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said in a statement last month.
