New Delhi: The government will auction off large oil and gas fields from state-owned enterprises ONGC and OIL to increase the country’s hydrocarbon production, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Thursday. He spoke about the launch of the third auction round of small discovered lands and said that businesses can not sit indefinitely on resources they may have discovered. These resources actually belong to the country and they will be earned by offering them to interested institutions, he said.
A total of 32 oil and gas blocks with 75 discoveries were presented in the Discovered Small Field (DSF) Round III. These small and marginal fields were discovered by the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL), but they were not economically viable to develop due to the fiscal regime and their small size. Under DSF, liberal conditions, including pricing and marketing freedom, are offered, making it viable. ‘There will be no DSF next time. Next time it will be a ‘big’ round (auction of big countries), “said Pradhan.
He said the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), the technical arm of the oil ministry, has the “full mandate” to identify unmonitored major fields that could be offered. ‘Resources do not belong to a company. They belong to the nation and the government. They cannot lie indefinitely with a company. “If someone can not earn it, we will have to bring a new regime,” he said.
The statement comes a few weeks after his ministry said India’s largest oil and gas producer ONGC was selling a stake in the production of oil fields such as the Ratna R series in Western foreign countries to private companies, and foreign partners in gas fields from the KG basin get. PTI reported on April 25 a seven-point action plan, ‘ONGC Way Forward’. It was drawn up by the ministry which called on the firm to consider selling a stake in driving countries such as Panna-Mukta and Ratna and R-series in western foreign and rural fields such as Gandhar in Gujarat to private enterprises while selling / privatizing ‘marginal fields that do not perform.
The organization wanted ONGC to bring in global players in the gas-rich KG-DWN-98/2 block, where production would rise sharply next year, and the Ashokenagar block, which was recently produced in West Bengal. Also identified for the purpose is the Deendayal block in the KG basin that the firm bought from the Gujarat government company GSPC a few years ago. “This ‘chalti ka name gaddi’ (something that only barely works) will not work. We have to make brave decisions, ”said Pradhan. “Money must be made for idle, unmonitored resources, especially with state-owned enterprises.” For a country that imports 85 percent of its oil needs, resources that are lazy for a long time cannot be allowed, he said.
‘Our goal is to maximize production. We must therefore look at all available options. “We can not have a situation where countries lie with some for a long time and are not developed,” he said.
DSF-III offers 11 rural blocks, 20 foreign and one deepwater area. These blocks, spread over about 13,000 square kilometers, contain 75 oil and gas discoveries with a combined resource base of 230 million tons of oil and oil equivalent gas. In the previous two rounds between 2016 and 2018, 54 blocks, taken away from ONGC and OIL, were awarded.
According to DGH, 29 field development plans have been submitted involving $ 1.76 billion in investment. The production of oil from the areas allocated in two rounds DSF is intended to reach 1.3 million tons by 2024 and the gas yield to 2.9 billion cubic meters. The proposal, made in April, was the third attempt by the Ministry of Petroleum to get ONGC to privatize its oil and gas fields.
Source: Telangana Today