Christmas tender for ONGC marginal fields
Something to look forward to this Christmas is ONGC’s tender for 26 marginal field service contracts.
On offer will be 13 onshore fields across Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan and 13 offshore fields on the west coast, in ONGC’s fourth tender for marginal fields. ONGC tells us its internal teams are responding to queries raised by company lawyers about the terms in its revised marginal field’s policy ahead of final approval by the Executive Purchase Committee (EPC).
ONGC managers want to float the tender within a week of EPC approval, or around Christmas, and interested companies will have 45 days to submit bids. ONGC will take around 60 days to evaluate them and it expects to sign contracts by March 31.
Each field has less than one million tonnes of in-place or recoverable oil or oil equivalent gas. Six gasfields in AP sit in the onshore KG basin; three gasfields are in Rajasthan; while four oilfields are in Gujarat.
Some of the offshore fields hold oil, others hold gas. Eight fields are leftovers from three previous rounds: the first in 2004 for onshore fields; the second in 2006 for offshore fields; and the third in 2007 for onshore fields.
ONGC expects a good response: for the first time it is offering international oil prices. In the past ONGC offered unrealistically low prices of $26 to $35/barrel for oil from marginal fields, keeping bidders away.
Contractors must sell gas at the government set price of $4.20/mmbtu in line with the gas allocation policy which gives priority to fertiliser factories, followed by LPG extractors, then power stations. Fields producing less than 100,000 cm/d are exempt from the allocation policy.