New Delhi, Feb. 6: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will be spearheading the country’s oil hunt with a proposed investment of $1 billion in 14 of the 20 exploration blocks for which contracts were signed today under the fourth round of the new exploration licensing policy (NELP).

“A sum of Rs 5,500 crore is being committed under the 20 NELP-IV contracts for oil exploration,” petroleum minister Ram Naik told reporters. Another Rs 350 crore is expected to be invested in eight coal-bed methane blocks for which contracts were also signed.

Naik said that around Rs 5,000 crore has already been invested in the first three rounds of NELP.

“Over 9 lakh square km, comprising 30 per cent of the total sedimentary area of India, has now come under the four NELP rounds which is three times the area under exploration before the launch of NELP,” he added.

The minister also announced that the next (NELP-V) round of oil exploration would be launched in April.

ONGC chairman Subir Raha said while ONGC had “indicated an investment” of $900 million, another $100 million would come from OIL for the five blocks which they had jointly taken up. Raha said the investment would be made in phases.

Another interesting development of the NELP-IV round is that downstream national oil companies Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum have also made a foray into upstream oil exploration as joint venture partners of ONGC in some blocks. Gail (India) Ltd has signed a contract for two blocks as part of the consortium.

While 10 of the contracts signed today were for deep water blocks, the other 10 are onland blocks. There is one block each in Assam, Tripura and Nagaland which ONGC and OIL have taken up as joint ventures.

ONGC has also taken up five of the eight coal- bed methane blocks. Two of these blocks are in the Karanpura area of Jharkhand.

Reliance Industries has signed the contract for three coal-bed methane blocks. While two of these are in Rajasthan, one overlaps Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.