New Delhi: The country’s largest petroleum retailer Indian Oil Corporation would be tying up with Sonatrach and Oil India Ltd (OIL) for bidding for oil and gas blocks in Algeria.

Sonatrach operates the largest oil field in Algeria —- Hassi Messaoud, and is owned by the Algerian government.

IndianOil-OIL in tie-up with Sonatrach had last month bagged three onshore oil blocks in Libya.
These blocks were 1, 2 and 3 in contract area 95/96 in the Ghadames Basin of Libya.

The Algerian company has diversified activities covering all aspects of petroleum business ranging from oil production, exploration, transportation and refining. It also operates over 2,400 miles of crude oil pipelines in the country.

Speaking to DNA Money, IndianOil director (business development) B M Bansal said, “We will take part in the Algerian bidding round and Sonatrach being a good exploration and production company we will like to go with them.”

Besides Algeria, Bansal said IndianOil might also take part in bidding for oil and gas blocks in Australia whenever a bidding round was announced.

On the domestic front, IndianOil is keen to take part in the seventh round of bidding under the New Exploration and Licensing Policy.

Bansal said the company would be going solo for type S blocks since it would like to get operatorship experience. Type S is a new category created in NELP VII for blocks covering small area up to 200 kilometre.

IndianOil would be approaching companies, like Petrobras, ENI, Shell and British Gas, that have experience in deepwater production for jointly bidding for deepwater blocks offered in this round.

 

Source : Dna