Over 20 companies attend India's CBM IV road show in Australia
26 Sep 2009
A total of 57 delegates from more than 20 companies and organisations, including 14 exploration and production (E&P) companies, participated in the road show for promoting the fourth bid round of coal bed methane (CBM IV) at Brisbane on Thursday.
Australian companies that participated in the road show included Aker Solutions Australia, Benaris Group, Blue Energy, European Gas Ltd, Gippsland Offshore Petroleum, LINC Energy, Norwest Energy NL, Origin Energy, Xstrata etc, a government release said.
The government is offering 10 CBM blocks in the fourth round following overwhelming response to the third round of CBM bidding in 2006.
"Encouraged by our past successes, we are offering 10 Blocks in the CBM-IV covering an area of about 5,000 sq km spread over seven Indian states namely, Assam, Jharkhand, Orrissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu," R S Pande, secretary, petroleum and natural gas, said.
CBM is being offered in the backdrop of significant findings in the eastern and central parts of India, Pande said, adding, that the exploration activities have established encouraging CBM resources in some of the awarded blocks since the launch of CBM-I in 2001.
Commercial assessment has established about 8 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of reserves in 5 CBM blocks, he said. Commercial production of CBM started in July 2007 from Raniganj (South) CBM block which is being operated by GEECL. The Ranigang block is producing about 100,000 cubic metres per day, he said.
