Indian Government awards 31 contract areas under DSF Bid Round 2016

The Indian Government has formally signed the contracts of the fields awarded under the Discovered Small Field (DSF) Bid Round 2016.

The event was presided by Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan in the presence of Secretary for Petroleum and Natural Gas K D Tripathi, and other senior officials.

The union minister also launched a two-way Interactive Portal for DSF to facilitate contract management and redressal of queries.

Pradhan told at the gathering that the DSF initiative is a step towards the plan to reduce India’s energy imports by 10% by 2022.

The 31 contract areas were awarded to 22 companies. Eight of these locations are situated offshore.

The minister also added that during the DSF bid round, the government introduced multiple new initiatives that include the implementation of e-bidding system, an interactive mobile app, a virtual data centre, a dedicated facilitation cell and bidder facilitation workshops.

Pradhan said: “In the face of a global oil glut, and oil prices at half their level three years ago, we took a bet with this bidding round for hydrocarbon assets, thereby exemplifying the boldness that is now the face of business in India.

“Not just that, the overall response that we received from the bid round, even from bidders who could not succeed, has been nothing short of outstanding.”

The combined peak production from the awarded fields is estimated to be nearly 15,000bopd of oil and 2MMSCMD of gas over the economic life.

The DSF bidding generated revenues of nearly Rs464bn ($7.13bn), while the awarded fields is expected to create employment for 37,500 people.

Pradhan also stated that the government will soon be conducting a second round of DSF bidding, and will introduce the Hydrocarbons Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) through the Open Acreage Licensing  mechanism that would facilitate further E&P investment.