The Ministry for Petroleum & Natural Gas has been caught by surprise by the unexpected response it has got within weeks of India opening its oil and gas exploration space.

From international players — ExxonMobil to Shell to BP to Total — to home-grown Reliance Industries, Essar, erstwhile Cairn (now Vedanta), and public sector giants like ONGC, all are all assessing data.

As on August 18, almost 280 entities were assessing the prospects; ₹4 crore worth of data available with the National Data Repository (NDR) has been sold; and 45 Expression of Interests (EoIs) received, an official in the know told BusinessLine.

This is a respite for Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and his exploration team, who according to sources, were recently pulled up by the Prime Minister’s Office for not concentrating enough on the upstream segment — exploration and production — of the hydrocarbons space.

NDR is the key to the Open Acreage Licensing (OAL) policy, which allows entities to carve out their own exploration areas.

OAL offers 2.7 million sq km of Indian sedimentary basin out of the total 3.14 million sq km NDR has mapped.

Asked what could be the reason for such a response, as India has never been a priority destination for hydrocarbon hunt, those involved said, “agreed India’s hydrocarbon space is no North Sea or Gulf of Mexico, but with NDR data the companies now have a better sense of where they want to drill or risk their money.”

Anyway, the companies are paying a nominal price to access NDR data, unlike elsewhere.

While not disclosing the names of those who have submitted the EoIs due to confidentiality conditions, the official said the 45 EoIs are for 48,000 sq km area across seven basins, of which 15,000 sq km are for offshore and 32,000 sq km onshore.

In fact, the response has been such that the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons, which is the caretaker of NDR, is now being compelled to raise its network storage capacity by almost 50 times.

Companies will be allowed to submit EoIs till November 15, and within a month, the notice inviting offers will be put out. Then, in a month or so, bids will be invited. The bid evaluation will be based on minimum-work programme and revenue-sharing model. Contracts could be awarded in March-April next year to meet the May 2018 target date for signing the contracts.

The EoI process is an ongoing cycle, so when the first lot goes out the companies would in tandem be looking at other areas. However, there will be a cap on the number of areas they can carve out.