New Delhi: The bid round-6 of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) is going to be launched next month, said Additional Petroleum Secretary (Exploration) Amar Nath on Friday. Addressing an investors' meet organised by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) for Discovered Small Fields (DSF) bid round-3, Nath said that India is one of the few countries where energy demand will increase as the country's per capita consumption of energy, which is just 1/3rd of the world average.
Even as the government has shown keenness to seek private investment in the oil exploration and production sector, private sector has chosen to stay away from the bidding process under OALP for a while now.
The last two rounds under OALP have received a tepid response from private players, who have chosen to stay away from the bidding process. While OALP round-5 saw only one bid from a private sector entity (Invenire Petrodyne Ltd), no private player turned up for bidding in round-4 of OALP. For both the rounds, all the blocks on offer went to public sector companies Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL).
Addressing the investors, Petroleum Secretary Tarun Kapoor said that the tenders for CBM (Coal bed methane) will also be out soon. Kapoor said that there are big opportunities in the Indian upstream sector, and the country is looking for enthusiastic participation from the private sector, and those from abroad. He said that after the DSF round-3, the tenders for OALP bid round-6 and CBM will be coming out soon. He added said that production from earlier rounds of DSF has started happening and more will follow in the next year.
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