New Delhi: The government has extended the deadline for submitting bids under the latest oil and gas block auction for the third time, allowing potential investors an additional six weeks, according to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
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The bid submission deadline for the Open Acreage Licensing Policy-X (OALP-X) round has now been extended to February 18, 2026, the DGH said on its website. OALP-X is the largest acreage offering under India’s upstream licensing programme.
While the DGH did not specify the reason for the extension, industry sources said the move may have taken into account the year-end holiday season across several countries.
The 10th OALP round was launched in February during India Energy Week 2025 in New Delhi and was originally scheduled to close at the end of July. The deadline was first extended to October 31 and then to December 31, 2025.
Alongside OALP-X, the government has also extended the bid submission deadline for the fourth round of the Discovered Small Field (DSF) auction and the special coal-bed methane (CBM) round to February 18, 2026.
Under OALP-X, the government has offered 25 blocks covering a total area of about 191,986 square kilometres. The acreage includes six onshore blocks, six shallow-water blocks, one deepwater block and 12 ultra-deepwater blocks spread across 13 sedimentary basins.
The round includes four blocks in the Andaman basin with a combined area of 47,058 sq km. Union Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has described the Andaman basin as having the potential to hold even larger oil and gas reserves than those discovered in Guyana.
Overall, OALP-X offers the largest area so far for exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. Crude oil is refined into fuels such as petrol and diesel, while natural gas is used for power generation, urea production, compressed natural gas (CNG) for vehicles and domestic cooking fuel.
Across the previous nine OALP rounds, a total area of about 3.78 lakh sq km was offered.
Before OALP-X, the ninth round, OALP-IX, was the largest offering. It featured 28 blocks covering around 1.36 lakh sq km.
OALP bid rounds were introduced after the adoption of an open acreage regime in 2016, replacing the earlier system under which the government identified and auctioned exploration blocks. Under the new framework, companies can propose areas for exploration outside those already held by other operators.
The open acreage regime is governed by the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), whose key features include reduced royalty rates, concessional royalty for early commercial production, no oil cess, exploration rights over retained areas for the full contract life, and freedom in marketing and pricing of oil and gas.
Blocks are awarded based on the revenue-sharing terms offered by bidders and the work programmes they commit to.
OALP-IX, concluded in September last year, attracted four bidders, including state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Oil India Ltd (OIL) and private-sector Vedanta Ltd, according to the DGH. Most blocks received only two bids.
That round also marked the first instance of Reliance Industries Ltd and BP jointly bidding with ONGC for a block in the Gujarat offshore area.
ONGC won 11 blocks on its own and three in partnership with OIL, and also secured the shallow-water block in the Gujarat-Saurashtra basin that it bid for with Reliance-BP. Vedanta, which had bid for all 28 blocks, won seven, while OIL secured the remaining six.
Prior to OALP-IX, Reliance and BP had participated in only two of the eight bid rounds held since 2017, winning both blocks they bid for.
The government has been hoping that opening up more acreage for exploration will help raise domestic oil and gas production and reduce India’s USD 220 billion crude oil import bill.
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Under the open acreage policy, areas identified by explorers are aggregated twice a year and put up for bidding, with the firm that identifies a block receiving a five-point advantage. Vedanta had emerged as the biggest winner in the first OALP round, securing 41 of the 55 blocks on offer, and picked up another 10 areas in two subsequent rounds, while later rounds have largely been dominated by state-owned companies.