Offer of blocks under the Fifth Round of NELP

The Government initiated an exercise for identifying new areas for opening up indigenous exploration of oil and gas under the fifth round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy(NELP-V). NELP-V was launched on January 4, 2005, with an offer of 20 blocks (six deepwater, two shallow water and twelve on land blocks) for exploration under an international competitive bidding system. The last date for receipt of bids is May 31, 2005. This will open an area of about 1,15,000 Sq.Km of domestic sedimentary basin for exploration and should help find more oil and gas in the country. The Government has undertaken comprehensive promotional road shows in India and abroad to generate interest amongst local and foreign E&P companies and potential investors. To facilitate data viewing on the blocks, data centres were opened for review of technical data. For the first time, data on all the blocks has also been made available online. There has been encouraging response from Indian and foreign companies and already several companies have purchased data packages, which promises good response in bidding under NELP-V. Notable among the companies showing keen interest in the Indian oil and gas blocks are global oil majors such as Statoil, BP, BG, Petrobas.