New Delhi: In a massive offshore bid round, India is offering 26 blocks or areas for the discovery and production of oil and gas, upstream regulator DGH announced on Tuesday.

In a separate phase, 16 locations for coal-bed methane (CBM) prospecting are also being made available concurrently.

The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) stated without providing a deadline for bidding that the “government announces the offer of 26 blocks encompassing an area of about 2.23 lakh square kilometres for exploration and development through worldwide competitive bidding.”

The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which was published on March 30, 2016, is the 2016 policy that is guiding the bid rounds.

Since then, 134 exploration and production blocks have been allocated following the conclusion of seven bid rounds of the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP). These blocks span 19 sedimentary basins and a total size of 2,07,691 square km.

In July, an eighth round with ten zones was introduced. It has not yet been revealed who won that round.

If Round-VIII blocks are awarded successfully, an additional 36,316 sq km of exploration acreage will be added, bringing the total amount of exploration acreage under the OALP regime to 2,44,007 sq km.

The most recent round is referred to by DGH as the “Offshore Bid Round (OALP Bid Round-IX) under HELP.” Nearly as much space is being made available for exploration in OALP-IX as was bid out in the previous eight rounds combined.

The 16 CBM blocks being offered in the special bid round, according to DGH, are distributed among Madhya Pradesh (4), Chhattisgarh (3), Telangana (3), Maharashtra (2), Odisha (2), Jharkhand (3), and West Bengal (4). (1 each).

The CBM blocks are being sold on a revenue share basis, similar to OALP; businesses that provide the government the biggest share of their earnings will get the block.

Blocks in low prospective basins are an exception to this norm, where the work schedule, such as seismic imaging or well drilling, will be the deciding factor.

In addition to a revenue-sharing contract model, HELP offers appealing and liberal terms like lower royalties, no oil cess, no revenue-share bidding for blocks in less promising basins, freedom in marketing and pricing, year-round bidding, the ability for investors to carve out blocks of interest, and a single licence to cover both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, among others.