New Delhi: Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has announced the Notice Inviting Offer (NIO) seeking partners for enhancement of production from its marginal nomination fields in line with its goal of maximising recovery from its producing fields. The move is in line with the direction given by the Centre to ONGC to look for partners for exploration activities and for bringing discovered fields to production. At the launch of round-3 of Discovered Small Fields (DSF) in June, former Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan had said that the government would monetise idle, discovered assets of ONGC, if the company doesn't make efforts to monetise them at the earliest.
The Centre has placed a lot of emphasis on improving India's domestic oil and gas production in order to reduce the country's dependence on imports. India imports nearly 80 percent of its domestic oil requirement and nearly 50 percent of its natural gas requirement.
Under the NIO, 11 onland contract areas comprising of 43 oil and gas fields with a total in-place O+OEG volume of about 160 MMTOE have been offered to interested companies through an International Competitive Bidding (ICB) Route. These contract areas are spread across the states of Gujarat, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Eligible companies (Indian or Foreign), either alone or in consortium with other companies, may bid for one or more contract areas. The bidders are required to fulfil the requisite technical and financial criteria as per the NIO conditions and the bids would be evaluated on the basis of revenue sharing from the incremental production.
ONGC is inviting the bids through its e-bidding portal by December 3 this year. A pre-bid conference will be held on October 20, (mode or venue to be intimated later). Bidders interested in studying the data can purchase field information docket and data packages. Upon request, the interested companies shall be able to access the data viewing facility at IRS, Ahmedabad, and visit the fields, if required.
(PSU Watch– India's Business News centre that places the spotlight on PSUs, Bureaucracy, Defence and Public Policy is now on Google News. Click here to follow. Also, join PSU Watch Channel in your Telegram. You may also follow us on Twitter here and stay updated.)