With an aim to boost the country’s output of oil and gas through greater foreign investment, the government has replaced the New Exploration and Licensing Policy (NELP) with the Open Acreage Licensing policy (OALP) which will allow companies to select exploration blocks on their own, without waiting for a formal bid round from the government. This replaces the controversial profit model in petroleum with a revenue share model.
Along with this, the government also launched the country's first national data repository (NDR) which is an integrated data repository of the Indian sedimentary basins, in line with the Digital India initiative. It is the key facilitator for the new exploration policy, as it offers information to domestic and foreign oil companies of about 3.14 million sq km of sedimentary basins.
The open acreage system and the repository are expected to supplement and strengthen the reforms in the sector and increase the level of involvement by investors in development of exploration sector. The open acreage system aims at building on the Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP), launched last year, that simplified the fiscal regime and gives marketing and pricing freedom to explorers.