The public sector oil exploration and production major, ONGC, is consciously expediting exploration in areas that it was given on ‘nomination basis’ — acreages not won through a competitive bidding process.
The company’s medium-term perspective plan speaks of ‘expeditious conversion of nomination ‘petroleum exploration licences’ into ‘mining lease’.
The hurry is because the validity of these licences will expire in 2014. If ONGC does not do anything in these areas, it runs the risk of these blocks being taken away from it and given to other oil exploration and production companies.
It is learnt that ONGC has 28 ‘nomination exploration licences’.
An ONGC source said the company has been trying to speed up the process of conversion of petroleum exploration licences into mining leases in recent years. Three years back, ONGC had 228 MLs, the source said. Today, it has 340, with a total area of 30,758 sq. km.
On the BSE today, the ONGC share (of face value of Rs 5) opened at Rs 279.20.