India: Oil & Gas Reforms in Oil and Gas Exploration

The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan informed that the Government takes various policy and administrative initiatives from time to time to facilitate hydrocarbon exploration in the country.

New Delhi/India – Some of the policy decisions taken by the Government in recent years to enhance exploration and production activities are as under:

• The Government has approved Hydrocarbon and Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) and the same has been notified on March 30, 2016. This policy provides for a uniform licensing system to explore and produce all hydrocarbons such as oil, gas, coal bed methane, shale oil/gas, etc under a single licensing framework. The policy also provides many incentives such as reduced royalty rates for offshore blocks, marketing & pricing freedom and an easy to administer revenue sharing model.

• Marketing and pricing freedom for new gas production from deepwater, ultra deepwater and high pressure-high temperature areas subject to certain conditions.

• Discovered Small Fields Policy – 67 oil & gas fields which have been held by ONGC and OIL for many years, have not been exploited and has been approved for bidding under this policy.

• Policy for grant of extension to the production sharing contracts of 28 small and medium sized discovered blocks.

• Policy framework for relaxation, extensions and clarifications at the development and production stage under PSC regime for early monetization of hydrocarbon discoveries: Government has approved this policy on 10.11.2014, and the same is being implemented. Under this policy, about 40 pending cases have been resolved.

• New Domestic Natural Gas price Guidelines, 2014: Under these guidelines, gas price has been linked to the market/ important hub prices.

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