Page 4 - AsianOil Week 44

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Indian exploration auction attracts eight bids
FINANCE & INVESTMENT
INDIA’S fourth Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) exploration bid round has attracted eight bids for the seven blocks that were offered.
Bidding closed on October 31, with only the country’s state-run majors submitting offers for the various permits. Upstream regulator the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) had bid for all of the blocks, while Oil India Ltd (OIL) had bid for a single block. Five lie in the Vin- dhyan Basin, one is in the Bengal Purnea Basin and the last is in the Rajasthan Basin.
“Seven onshore blocks were on offer with an area of approximately 18,500 square km,” the DGH said. “The results demonstrate contin- ued interest of established players in the Indian [upstream], with bids received for all seven blocks. The evaluation of the bids will be under- taken in a time-bound manner.”
The fourth bid round uses the new and more attractive exploration terms that New Delhi approved in February. Under the new terms, which will apply to all future rounds, the gov- ernment is emphasising the importance of work commitments when picking winners.
Successful bids for blocks in Vindhyan (a Category-II basin) and Bengal Purnea (a
Category-III basin) will be determined by the size of planned exploration programmes rather than the amount of production offered to the state. The government introduced the changes with the hope of encouraging greater investment in Category-II and III basins, which are defined as having seen little to no exploration.
Winners in the already producing Category-I basins, such as Rajasthan, are also selected based upon their exploration programmes and a 50% cap on revenue sharing has been introduced.
Moreover, the new policy also introduces an alternative dispute resolution mechanism as well as a “single window” application system for online clearances.
India’s first bid round under OALP attracted 110 bids for 55 blocks, the second round drew 33 offers for 14 blocks and the third garnered 42 bids for 23 blocks. The three rounds led to the award of 87 blocks covering 118,000 square km.
“The expression of interest [EoI] submis- sion window for the OALP-V bid round is open till November 30, 2019, and companies have another opportunity to take part in the blossom- ing Indian exploration and production sector,” the DGH added.
IOC advances plastics-to- oil conversion research
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
STATE-RUN refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) has reportedly completed the first phase of research into converting waste plastics into synthetic oil and is now planning to develop commercial processes.
IOC’s research into the liquefaction of plas- tic waste over the last few years will allow it to install conversion facilities at its downstream complexes, news service IANS reported on November 3.
“The initial research on plastic liquefaction has been encouraging. We now have to take this research to the proof stage, which will also help us develop processes for commercial extrac- tion of oil from plastics waste,” IANS quoted an unnamed company official as saying. The source did not say what technologies the company was pursuing, but the process of pyrolysis – heating plastic waste without oxygen to produce a syn- thetic oil – is well established.
Company chairman Rajiv Singh was quoted as saying that while the company was developing plastic liquefaction technology, it was also inves- tigating other waste solutions.
These include lining road surfaces using a mixture of bitumen and single-use plastics waste, and the company has launched a special grade of bitumen made with plastics waste – CRMB 55P. The company has also developed soluble bitumen packaging made from sin- gle-use plastic waste.
IOC is also seeking to convert used cook- ing oil (UCO) into fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), which can then be used in the pro- duction of biodiesel. India’s UCO-biodiesel potential is estimated at 3.5mn tonnes per year (tpy).
The development of commercial liq- uefaction systems would see India join countries such as China and Japan, where efficiency levels range between 38% and 63%. The technology could represent a major breakthrough for the South Asian country in terms of dealing with its plastic waste generation, which the Central Pol- lution Control Board (CPCB) estimates at around 25,940 tonnes per day.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 45 06•November•2019