Reliance-BP makes first bid for oil block

New Delhi: Reliance Industries and its British partner BP plc have made their first bid for an oil and gas exploration acreage in over eight years by bidding for one of the 32 blocks up for auction in latest licensing round that saw mining major Vedanta putting in as many as 30 bids while state-owned ONGC vying for 20.

Bidding for 14 blocks on offer in the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) round-II and another 18 oil and gas blocks and 5 coal-bed methane (CBM) blocks on offer in OALP-III closed on Wednesday.

Official sources said Vedanta, which had walked away with 41 out of the 55 blocks offered in OALP-I last year, bid for 30 areas.

Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) bid for 20 blocks while Oil India Ltd (OIL) bid for 16. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), GAIL (India) and SunPetro bid for two blocks each, they said. RIL-BP made an offer for one block in the Krishna Godavari basin.

This is the first time that BP is bidding for an exploration acreage in the country. It had entered the country buying 30 per cent stake in RIL's 21 oil and gas exploration blocks in 2011 for $7.2 billion. All but a couple of blocks have since been relinquished. Mukesh Ambani-owned RIL had on its own bid for six blocks in the ninth round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) but did not win any block.

NELP has since been replaced by Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) under which OALP bids round have been held. Sources said the block RIL-BP bid for is the same which BP had demarcated during the expression of interest (EoI) stage.