BL reported that a high level panel of secretaries has recommended to reject bids by Reliance Industries and state owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp for the Andaman sea block as they had offered very low profit share to the government.

RIL, which had bid for six out of the 34 areas offered for exploration under the ninth auction round of New Exploration Licensing Policy earlier this year, was ranked number one for the Andaman deep sea blocks, AN-DWN-2010/3 and AN-DWN-2010/4, ahead of a consortia of ONGC and Oil India Ltd.

An Empowered Committee of Secretaries, which reviewed the bids recently, felt that 10.95% profit share offered by RIL was less than benchmark 15% and therefore was deemed very lo.

The ECS in its recommendations, which would go to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, opined that RIL should not be awarded these two blocks,

The panel had given the same opinion on ONGC’s 6.7% profit share offer for two other Andaman Sea block AN-DWN-2010/1 and AN-DWN-2010/2, where it was the sole bidder.

It also wanted the bid by a consortium of ONGC-OIL and GAIL for deep sea block GS-DWN-2010/1 and that of ONGC-OIL-BPRL for Kerala-Konkan deepwater block KK-DWN-2010/1 also rejected as they offered very low profit share.

(Sourced from BL)