The Government has implemented plethora of reforms in the past five years in the E&P sector. The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) replacing the erstwhile New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) was approved in March 2016 and the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) along with the National Data Repository (NDR) were launched in June 2017 as the key drivers to accelerate the Exploration and Production (E&P) activities in India. Government under three (3) OALPRounds have already awarded Eighty-Seven (87) Blocks covering an area of 1,18,280 Sq. Kmwith leading E&P companies.

In continuation to its determination for reduction in import dependency of oil and gas and accelerating E&P activities, the Government notified further policy reforms in upstream sector on 28^th February, 2019 to increase exploration activities, attract domestic and foreign investment in unexplored/unallocated areas of sedimentary basins and promote ease of doing business by streamlining and expediting the approval processes.

The Government has now launched the Bid Round-IVfor International Competitive Bidding from27^th August, 2019which will be carried out under the revised policy framework. In this bid round,7 blocks, with an area of approximately 18,500 sq. km., are being offered for bidding to the investor community. All seven (7) blocks are based on Expressions of Interest submitted by the bidders.

Salient features of Policy Reforms cover Category Specific Bid evaluation criteria with more weightage to exploratory work programme, Category-II and III type blocks will be bided based on exploratory work programme only, shorter exploration period, concessional royalty rates to expedite oil and gas production and introduction of alternate dispute resolution mechanism.

The exploration acreage of India has been enhanced from 90,000 square kilometers in 2017 to 2,10,000 sq. km after successful completion of three OALP rounds under HELP and is expected to rise with upcoming bidding rounds. To further increase exploration acreage of India, Government has increased EoI cycles from two (2) to three (3) in a year with the revised dates of April 1 to July 31, August 1 to November 30 and December 1 to March 31.

With the releaseof Notice Inviting Offer (NIO), bidders can study the data available in National Data Repository (NDR) and select blocks for the bidding. The bidders would be able to submit their bids through an online e-bidding portal starting27^th August 2019 and the bidding round would continue till1200 hrs. 31^st October2019.The blocks are spread across 3sedimentary basins;7Onland blocks are on offer under OALP-IV whichincludes 6 blocksin Category-II and III Basins and 1 block in Category-I Basin.  It is expected that OALP Round IV would generate immediate exploration work commitment of around USD 200-250 million.

The 5^thcycle of submitting Expressions of Interest (EoIs) is currently going on till November30, 2019 and would be followed by the 6^th cyclefrom December 1, 2019 till March 31, 2020.

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Details of Blocks on Offer (OALP Bid Round-IV)

(All blocks are onland)

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YKB/RB