FICCI lauds Ministry of Petroleum, Natural Gas, says initiatives will boost sector

New Delhi [India], July 1 (ANI): Lauding the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas over the launch of the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) and National Data Repository (NDR), the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on Friday said these initiatives are set to give India's oil and gas exploration a big push.

"These initiatives launched under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), are major steps in India's journey towards achieving energy security. This is also a big step to incentivise the domestic exploration and production activities in the country; the bidding being done after a gap of seven years," said Pankaj Patel, President, FICCI.

Earlier in the week, the Centre announced the launch of the Open Acreage Licensing process, which will enable firms to identify suitable locations for hydrocarbon hunting.

"As much as 52 per cent of India's sedimentary basins are still unappraised and the last seismic data acquisition of the unappraised sedimentary basins was undertaken by the government nearly 25 years ago," said Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, while addressing the inaugural event of the National Data Repository.

Pradhan also said the government is also formulating new policies for enhanced oil recovery under the HELP.

The next round of bidding under the Discovered Small Field policy is beng scheduled and the finalisation of block and invitation of bids will take place on December 15.

According to reports, the bid submission window is slated to be open for 10 weeks from then. Bid evaluation and declaration of results will be underway in the following ten weeks. (ANI)

This story has not been edited. It has been published as provided by ANI