New Delhi: Government will sign revenue sharing contracts with recently announced winners of the second and third round of oil and gas auctions held under the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP), upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said in a statement.

Oil and Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is going to preside over the contract signing ceremony to be held in New Delhi on Tuesday.

M M Kutty, secretary at the oil ministry, V P Joy, directorate general of DGH and Bernard Looney, chief executive at BP will address the conference.



Government-owned Oil India, Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta, and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) won the maximum number of oil and gas fields under OALP-II and OALP-III auctions.

According to DGH, Oil India bagged 12 blocks followed by Vedanta with 10 and ONGC with eight, in both rounds put together.

The government had collectively put 37 blocks on offer under OALP-II and OALP-III, of which 32 blocks have been awarded.

British oil and gas firm BP along with its Indian upstream partner Reliance Industries (RIL) bagged one block under OALP -II in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

According to the oil ministry, the country’s acreage increased 210,000 square kilometre (sq km) by the end of OALP-II and OALP-III in 2019, as compared to 90,000 sq km in 2017.

Fourth window of submitting Expression of Interests (EoI) for OALP-IV closed on 15 May this year. Fifth window of EoI submissions commenced from 16 May and would end on 15 November 2019.

The new policy replaced the old system of government carving out areas and bidding them out. It guarantees marketing and pricing freedom and moves away from production sharing model to a revenue-sharing model where companies that offer maximum share of oil and gas to the government are awarded the block.