83 companies attend India's oil roadshow in London

Friday, 06 June 2003, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: The presence of 83 oil and gas companies, including several energy majors, at India's roadshow in London Thursday has raised expectations of a good response to the opening up of 24 exploration blocks. Petroleum Minister Ram Naik is leading the roadshow for the new blocks on offer under the fourth round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP-IV). These include 12 deepwater blocks, 11 on-land blocks and a shallow water block. After the inaugural roadshow held here on May 20, the London roadshow is the first one to be held abroad for NELP-IV. Bids for these blocks will close on September 30. "The roadshow was attended by 83 companies and organisations," the Indian petroleum ministry said in a statement issued here. "Some of the exploration and production companies that attended included BG Group, BHP, Amerada Hess, BP, ENI, Itochu, Saudi Aramco, Cairn Energy, Hardy Exploration and Tullow Oil." Naik said NELP-IV was launched in the backdrop of recent huge deepwater gas discoveries, some of the largest globally in 2002, in the Krishna-Godavari basin on India's east coast. "So far a total of nine discoveries with initial in place reserve estimates of over 300 million metric tonnes of oil plus oil equivalent gas, have been made under NELP during the short span of less than three years of exploration," Naik said. "With the implementation of an aggressive exploration programme under NELP, more and more discoveries are expected in the future." Emphasising the cordial Indo-British relationship and increasing bilateral trade between the two sides, Naik noted that several British companies like BG, Premier Oil, Cairn Energy and Hardy Exploration and Production Company were already operating in India. Promotional roadshows for NELP-IV will also be held at Calgary in Canada (June 9-10), Houston in the U.S. (June 11-12) and Perth in Australia (June 26-27).
Source: IANS
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