CCEA approves contract awards for 44 small oil and gas fields

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved to award contract in 31 contract areas of small oil and gas fields belonging to ONGC and Oil India Limited (OIL)
The contract areas include 44 fields, 28 inland and 16 offshore. The will be awarded under Discovered Small Field Policy bid round – 2016.

Key Facts

• The award of contract is expected to provide faster development of oil and gas fields and facilitate production of oil and gas thereby increasing energy security of the country.
• These areas were discovered long back but could not be monetized due to various reasons such as isolated locations, high development costs, small size of reserves, technological constraints, fiscal regime etc.
• This move is expected to monetise in-place locked hydrocarbons volume of 40 MMT oil and 22 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM) of gas over a period of 15 years, this supplementing the domestic production.

Background

For early monetization of these fields, Union Cabinet had approved 69 marginal fields in September, 2015 for offer under Discovered Small Fields Policy.  Out of these, 67 small fields were clubbed into 46 contract areas and were put on offer through online international competitive bidding.  A total of 134 e-bids were received for 34 contract areas from 47 companies (43 Indian companies and 4 were foreign companies).  These contract areas were awarded under the new regime of Revenue sharing Model.