Indian Government announce roadshow plans for marginal field auction

Following a last minute cancellation of the planned showcases for its marginal field auction at the IHS CERAWeek Conference in Houston, as we covered back in February, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons India (DGH) has announced that it plans to hold roadshows for the ‘Discovered Small Fields Bid Round 2016’ in the second quarter of this year.

The roadshows, which will be the first since the final “New Exploration Licensing Permit” (NELP) offering in 2009, will be held in Mumbai, London, Houston, Singapore, Perth, Calgary and Dubai. The DGH also plans to set up data centres at some of these petroleum prospecting hubs to make it easier for international bidders to study and understand the basins, with all bids to be made online.

India is focused on accelerating its indigenous hydrocarbon resource production, and as such, has recently introduced a new revenue sharing contract (RSC). This is due to start with the exploitation of the 67 marginal fields while resolving some 40 pending issues in the existing production sharing contract (PSC).

The marginal fields, discovered by Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd. (OIL), are grouped into 46 clusters and collectively hold approximately 372 million bbl of oil and 1.9 trillion scf of gas. Given the current market conditions, however, even the largest field (D-18, 108MMBO) will require technology which can lower the development costs if they are to be brought on stream and maximise recovery.

We are following developments and cover any further news on this blog.