New Delhi: The government has, for a second time, deferred the deadline for submission of bids in the auctioning of 25 oil and gas fields worth around Rs 1 lakh crore, without intimating a new deadline, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said. The second round of the Discovered Small Fields (DSF) auction started in August last year, with December 18 the original deadline for submitting bids. "The last date of bid submission for Discovered Small Field Round-II is extended. The revised date will be intimated later," the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said on its website. In 2016, the government brought in a new DSF policy wherein 'idle' small discovered fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) were taken away from them and auctioned to private players on liberalised terms, including marketing and pricing freedom and lower taxes.

The state-run companies say development on the fields is unviable due to their small size and the current capped prices. Private companies will, however, get full pricing and marketing freedom.