“The closing date for submitting bids for OALP Bidding Round X has been extended to May 29, 2026,” DGH said on its website.
While no reason was given for the extension, industry sources say it may have been done to give potential investors time to study the new liberalized rules brought in after the passing of the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Bill.
The tenth round of the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP-X), which was launched in February at the India Energy Week (IEW) 2025 in New Delhi, was originally scheduled to conclude by the end of July.
At the end of July, the deadline was extended to October 31 and again to December 31, 2025.
The OALP-X bid deadline was subsequently extended to February 18, 2026.
However, the deadline for submitting bids under the fourth round of the Discovered Small Field (DSF) bidding round and the Special Coal Bed Methane (CBM) round remains unchanged on February 18, 2026.
Under OALP-X, 25 blocks with a total area of approximately 191,986 square kilometers have been offered to bidders for the exploration and production of oil and gas.
The area offered includes six onshore blocks, six shallow-water areas, one deep-water block and twelve located in ultra-deep water across thirteen sedimentary basins, the DGH said.
The round includes four blocks with a combined area of 47,058 square kilometers in the Andaman Basin, which Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has touted as having the potential to contain even greater amounts of oil and gas reserves than those found in exploration hotspot Guyana.
The round provides the largest area yet for the exploration and production of crude oil, which is refined into fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and natural gas, which is used to produce power, make urea and convert it into CNG to run cars and fuel household kitchens.
An area of 3.78 lakh km2 was offered in the previous nine rounds.
The last bidding round, OALP-IX, was the largest before the current bidding round. The OALP-IX bidding round included 28 blocks or areas spread over 1.36 lakh square kilometers offered for exploration and production of oil and gas.
OALP bidding rounds were introduced after an open acreage policy was introduced in 2016, which moved away from the previous government practice of identifying and bidding out blocks to one in which explorers were given the freedom to identify any area outside those already held by one company or another, for oil and gas prospecting.
The salient features of this policy, called Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), include reduced royalty rates and concessional royalty rates for early commercial production, no oil CESS, exploration rights in all retained areas for the full term of the contract, and marketing and pricing freedom.
OALP-IX attracted four bidders in September 2024, including state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) and private sector Vedanta Ltd, with most blocks receiving only two bids, according to the DGH.
It was also for the first time that Reliance Industries Ltd-BP Plc along with ONGC combined bids for one block in coastal Gujarat.
ONGC won eleven blocks on its own and another three in collaboration with OIL. It also won the show water block in the Gujarat-Saurashtra basin that it had bid for with Reliance-BP.
Mining billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, which had bid for all 28 blocks on offer, won seven blocks, while OIL walked away with the remaining six.
Before OALP-IX, Reliance and its super-major partner BP had bid in just two of the previous eight bidding rounds since 2017. They had won both blocks.
Blocks are awarded to companies that offer the highest share of revenue from the oil and gas produced from the blocks and the work program they commit to.
The government hopes that releasing more acreage for exploration will help boost India’s oil and gas production, reducing its $220 billion oil import bill.
In 2016, it introduced an open acreage policy that moved away from the previous practice of identifying and bidding out blocks by the government to one in which explorers were given the freedom to identify any area beyond those already held by one company or another for oil and gas prospecting.
The identified areas should be clubbed and put up for bid twice a year.
The company that identifies the area gets a 5 point advantage.
Vedanta Ltd walked away with 41 blocks out of the 55 offered in the very first round and was awarded a further 10 areas in two subsequent rounds.
Other rounds were dominated by state-owned companies.
Published on February 6, 2026
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