Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas inked contracts for seven blocks, awarded under Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) Bid Round - IV. The government had launched the programme in August 2019.

The government will be signing Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) round-1 contracts for 55 oil and gas exploitation areas.

Provision of revenue expenditure/subsidy for sensitive petroleum products of ~Rs 217 billion for FY2019 and 2018v19 (BE), excluding allocation of new LPG connections to poor families.

Essar Oilfields Services India Limited (EOSIL) announced that it has been awarded a one-year, Rs 32-crore contract by ONGC to drill 30 wells at the latter's coal bed methane (CBM) block in Bokaro, Jharkhand. The Company will be deploying the MR#11 land rig for the job.

Avery colourful legend has it that during the construction of the railway line from Dibrugarh to Margherita by Assam Railways & Trading Co (AR&TC) in 1867, a herd of logging elephants returned to the camp with their feet covered in crude oil. Even as this led the AR&TC personnel to look for seepages, the site engineer, WL Lake, reportedly cried out in excitement to his workers, 'Dig boy, dig!' on coming to learn about it.

Nitin Prasad, Chairman, Shell Companies in India feels that the government is on the right track with its measures to attract international investments into the oil and gas sector. Speaking to INFRASTRUCTURE TODAY on the sidelines of FICCI's Business and Climate Summit, he also touched upon the British-Dutch multinational's India plans.

Speaking exclusively to INFRASTRUCTURE TODAY, Prof Kirit Parikh, Chairman Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe) and author of the seminal report on pricing methodology for diesel, domestic LPG and PDS, believes that though the federal dispensation is presently offering lucrative terms to investors in the oil and gas sector, it must also ensure that those commitments are adhered to.

Bloomberg announced today that a growing number of India's public sector corporations are adopting Bloomberg's Foreign Exchange electronic trading platform (FXGO) for foreign exchange dealing. The corporations include Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL), Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (REC) and ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL).

With a disinvestment target of raising Rs.72,000 crore this fiscal, the government is all set to rule Dalal Street with Rs.18,000 crore worth of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs).