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According to of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Jitin Prasada, India is moving from its traditional annual auction process of its hydrocarbon blocks to Open Acreage Licensing System.
"The government of India is moving gradually but inexorably towards the Open Acreage Licensing System from the current New Exploration Licensing Policy," Prasada. He was inaugurating international conference on National Data Repository (NDR).
He said that under this system, multiple bids can be placed by bidders in a year.
"Data for these blocks would be made available to the bidders through the National Data Repository. Thus, the NDR is expected to play a much larger and significant role in the exploration and production scenario in the years to come."
The minister said the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons has started the process of establishing an NDR that will be cater to the exploration and production sector as well as the academia.
"These initiatives are expected to give the much-needed boost to the research and development activities in the country and also help the industry through data integration and knowledge dissemination," Prasada said.
