New Delhi, Oct 12 (IANS) The response for the latest round of auction for handing over hydrocarbon assets in India for exploration and development has been “poor”, with even Reliance Industries refraining from making a single bid.
The deadline for receiving bids for the eighth round of auction under what is called the new exploration licensing policy, was noon Monday. The bids were opened at 1.30 p.m.

“We have one of the best production sharing contracts in the world. But wrong signals have gone resulting in what you say is a poor response,” said V.K. Sibal, the director general of hydrocarbons, or the oil regulator.

Out of the 70 blocks on offer, 76 bids were received for merely 36 blocks. Further, out of 24 deepwater blocks on the block, bids were made for eight. The interest in coal-bed methane blocks was proportionally higher, with eight out of 10 blocks receiving bids.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries did not bid for any oil block in this auction round.

Just when the auction was announced, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group had accused the oil ministry of failing to attract foreign investment for oil and natural gas blocks in the country because of what it termed as flip-flop, partisan and non-transparent policies.

The auction under the new policy conducted over the past three years revealed “the absolute failure of the oil ministry to attract any global capital inflow into the country’s upstream hydrocarbons sector”, the group charged.

“This is primarily due to absence of a well-defined, transparent and consistent policy regime,” J.P. Chalasani, chief executive of the group’s Reliance Power, has said. “Not even one of the top five international oil companies participated in the rounds.”