Dharmendra Pradhan heads for Singapore, UK for petro investments

New Delhi, Sep 9 Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan begins a six-day visit to Singapore and the UK on Friday to lead India's road shows to attract foreign investors for its discovered small oil and gas fields.

The bidding round for discovered small fields had been announced in July 2016 a Houston. Following that, 67 such fields are on the block, an official statement said. The process is open till end-October.

"These fields are spread over nine sedimentary basins and will be offered in 46 contract areas. These fields are projected to yield 625 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas and spread over 1,500 sq km on land, shallow water and deep water areas."

The auction is also being held under new norms, which replaces the controversial production-sharing contracts -- by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block -- that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine rounds.

Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.

IANS