Page 4 - AsianOil Week 01

AsianOil SOUTH ASIA AsianOil
Niko exits India’s deepwater KG-D6 block
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
CANADIAN independent Niko Resources has exited India’s deepwater KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) block after settling its arbitration case against partners Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and BP. Under the settlement, RIL and BP have agreed to pay the Canadian junior $36mn for its 10% stake in the block, raising RIL’s stake to 66.67% from 60% and BP’s interest to 33.33% from 30%.
Niko said late last month that the settlement was subject to certain conditions and that the net proceeds from the transaction would go towards paying down its debt.
The independent instigated arbitration after RIL and BP asked the company to exit KG-D6 following a default on a cash call. The two sen- ior partners asked Niko to relinquish its stake in December 2018 and sought approvals from upstream regulator the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to assume full con- trol of the block.
Niko, which had been trying to sell the stake for several years at that point, responded by filing
for arbitration under the rules of the London Court of International Arbitration.
Upstream reforms in India have seen RIL and BP unveil ambitious investment plans for the deepwater, which have overstretched the inde- pendent’s limited financial resources.
RIL and BP are spearheading a INR400bn ($5.6bn) development programme in KG-D6, which is targeting the R-Series, Satellite clus- ter and MJ discoveries. All three projects are expected to deliver 1bn cubic feet (28.32mn cubic metres) per day of new production by 2022. R-Series is projected to enter production this year, with Satellite set to come online in 2021 and MJ due to come on stream in 2022.
Niko revealed in November 2018 that it had chosen not to meet its investment obliga- tions after failing to securing funding for the developments.
“To conserve its remaining cash (approx- imately $3.6mn as of September 30, 2018), the company elected not to pay a D6 Block cash call that was due in early October, 2018,” Niko said at the time.™
ONGC wins seven onshore blocks
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
INDIA’S state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) has won all seven onshore exploration blocks that were offered in the country’s fourth Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP-IV) bid round.
Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natu- ral Gas Dharmendra Pradhan said the blocks, which span 18,510 square km, had a resource potential of around 33bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Five blocks lie in the Vindhyan Basin, one is in the Bengal Purnea Basin and the last is in the Rajasthan Basin.
“With the culmination of the fourth bid round today [January 2], we have awarded 94 blocks under the [OALP] exploration policy in a very short time span of two and a half years.
These 94 blocks cover an exploratory area of approximately 136,800 square km over 16 Indian sedimentarybasins,”theministersaid.
OALP was launched in June 2017 to replace the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) in an effort to boost interest in the country’s upstream and turn around a multi-year slide in oil production. However, this most recent round only attracted a total of eight bids, with state-run Oil India Ltd (OIL) competing unsuccessfully for the Rajasthan block.
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.
P4
w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 01 08•January•2020