CCEA okays award of 31 discovered small fields

THE CENTRE on Wednesday set the ball rolling to operationalise the much-awaited discovered small fields (DSFS) as the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved awarding 31 contract areas which will complement the country’s domestic fuel production and help in achieving energy security.

According to a government release, a total of 134 e-bids were received for 34 contract areas. A total of 47 companies submitted bids, of which 43 were Indian companies and rest foreign firms

The Cabinet had in September 2015approved 69 marginal fields to be offered under the DSF policy. Out of which, 67 DSFS were clubbed into 46 contract areas and put on offer through online international competitive bidding. Out of the 31 contract areas, 23 are onshore and 8 are offshore. These fields were discovered by ONGC and Oil India but could not be explored due to various hurdles reasons such as isolated locations, small size of reserves, high development costs, technological constraints, among others.

Some of the winners include Bharat Petroresources, Indian Oil Corporation, Sun Petrochemicals, Adani Welspun Exploration, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, South Asia Consultancy and Nippon Power.

Cabinet also okayed a proposal of a Bill to extend jurisdiction of Collection of Statistics Act, 2008, to Jammu & Kashmir. FE