In a statement made on Wednesday Oil Minister Mr. Murli Deora has said that the eighth round of oil and gas blocks auction held in 2009 has got a commitment of $1.1 billion in investment from oil companies for exploration.

Mr. Deora was speaking after the signing of contracts for 31 exploration blocks awarded to 23 companies in the eighth round of auctions. Among the companies that were awarded the contract included the likes of BHP Billiton Petroleum International, BG Exploration and Production and Cairn India. Adding on the matter Mr. Deora said, "Out of (the) 31 blocks, 17 blocks are awarded to national oil companies like ONGC, Oil India Ltd and NTPC".

Further Mr. Deora pointed out that the country is aiming to launch the ninth round of oil and gas blocks licensing in the third quarter of 2010. While referring to the seven auctions held earlier Mr. Deora said, "...The total investment under the earlier NELP (new exploration licensing policy) rounds stands at $13.8 billion". Meanwhile of the 36 oil and gas blocks awarded in the latest round of auction under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will sign Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) for 17 such blocks today.

PSCs for 34 out of these 36 exploration blocks that were bid for in the 8th edition of NELP will be signed today, said official sources, and state-owned ONGC and its' partners will sign contracts for half of it. A total of 70 oil and gas blocks and another 10 CBM blocks were offered for bidding, out of which only 44 blocks received bidding. The signing of PSCs for the CBM blocks will be done later as the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the awards only this month. Of the 10 CBM blocks offered in NELP-VIII, only 8 were awarded contracts.

ONGC & its partners bid for the maximum 25 of these 36 areas and won 17 blocks out of the total 70 as offered in NELP-VIII. Deep water blocks received the poorest response, as only 8 bids were received for the total of 24 blocks on offer. All of these 8 bids were single bids, with ONGC & partners bagging 7 blocks while one block was won by Cairn Energy Plc of UK. Of the 7 deep-sea blocks won by ONGC & partners, ONGC was sole operator in 5 of them, while it was a joint operator in one block each with Oil India Ltd (OIL) & BG Group of UK as the operator. Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC), GAIL India, NTPC and Andhra Pradesh Gas Infrastructure Corp were other partners of ONGC in the deep-sea block bidding.

On the other hand less than half of the total 28 shallow water blocks on offer received bids from interested companies. Of the 13 shallow water blocks that received bidding, ONGC again led the tally with a total of 6 blocks. Out of the total of 6 blocks in its tally, ONGC was the lead operator in 5, while OIL was the operator in 1. Indian Oil Corp and Adani Welspun Exploration Ltd were additional partners with ONGC in bidding for shallow water block. BHP Billiton Petroleum bagged 3 shallow water blocks and Cairn Energy won a KG basin offshore block.

At the same time onland blocks received the best response, with bids for 15 blocks being received out of 18 blocks on offer. ONGC won 4 onland blocks, while Jubilant, OIL, NTPC and Esveegee Steel also won onland blocks. 2 onland block bids were rejected by CCEA in March due to "very low percentage share of profit to government," said sources. ONGC won a total of 17 blocks wherein it was the operator in 14 blocks and non operator in the other 3 blocks.