India to submit bid for exploration block in Libya

Tuesday, 18 January 2005, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: State-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IndianOil) will jointly submit a bid for an exploration block in Libya for which global tenders have been invited. "We would jointly be bidding for Libya for exploration and production block under the fourth round of their new Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA4). The bids are to be submitted by January end," R.K. Dutta, OIL chairman and managing director, told the media on the sidelines of the ongoing energy conference Petrotech 2005. India's second largest exploration company OIL annually produces three million tonnes out of the around 30-33 million tonnes of domestic production. "This year our oil production should go up by 8-10 percent to reach around 3.3 million tonnes," said Dutta. As part of India's bid to secure oil equity and acreage overseas, OIL is participating in consortiums led by ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), in several ventures overseas including a pipeline project in Sudan, exploration in Iran, Cote d'Ivoire and the US. Now the two state-owned companies - OIL and IndianOil - are seeking overseas opportunities in the entire petroleum value chain. The IndianOil-OIL consortium is also seeking exploration blocks in countries like Myanmar, where India already has a stake in one offshore gas block A-1 and has been offered stakes in some other blocks. Regards progress on the development of a heavy oil block in Western Rajasthan, Dutta said, "We are planning to drill the first pilot well early next year in technical collaboration with the Venezuela National Oil Company." Within the country, OIL is operating in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Western Rajasthan, offshore Gujarat and in the Ganga Valley Basin in western Uttar Pradesh.
Source: IANS
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