(LiveMint)
Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) will shortly auction more than 60 of its discovered small and marginal fields to private companies, said two people aware of the development. The fields will be auctioned under the production enhancement contracts (PEC) mechanism, followed by global energy firms to enhance production from mature oil fields. Under PEC, the private company invests and introduces comprehensive technologies to improve production, while the ownership of the fields rests with ONGC. In January this year, the government allowed state-owned explorers to rope in the private sector to raise production to better exploit its hydrocarbon resources and cut dependence on foreign oil.
“Global advisory services firm KPMG has received the mandate to run the PEC process for ONGC,” said the first person cited above. “PEC is a priority as the government is attributing an enormous amount of importance to it. Besides, stagnating domestic production of oil and gas is a major concern. So, as a consequence of that, ONGC has decided to offer its hydrocarbon blocks to other explorers,” this person said.
