New Delhi, February 23 The government has extended the deadline for submitting bids under the special coal-bed methane (CBM) and small discovered fields bid rounds, giving investors additional time to factor in recent changes to oil and gas regulations.
Bids for 13 blocks or areas offered for prospecting gas from below coal seams (CBM) in the Special CBM Bid Round will now close on March 3, according to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
The blocks offered for bidding are in Jharkhand, West Bengal (one block each), Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha (two blocks each), and Telangana (three blocks).
Alongside, nine contract areas, comprising smaller oil and gas discoveries that were previously considered economically unviable to produce, are on offer for bidding in the fourth round of Discovered Small Fields (DSF), the deadline for which now is March 18, according to the DGH.
Both the Special CBM Bid Round and DSF-IV rounds were previously scheduled to close on February 18.
While coal seam gas, known as CBM, can be used to generate electricity, produce fertilizer, or be converted into CNG, the oil produced is turned into fuels such as petrol and diesel.
In DSF-IV, three onshore, four shallow-water offshore, and two deep-sea blocks are on offer for bidding.
The deadline extension follows the introduction of revised rules aimed at easing operational and policy constraints in the hydrocarbons sector. The extension is expected to provide bidders greater clarity and enable them to align proposals with the updated regulatory framework, industry sources said.
The government had previously extended the deadline for submitting bids for India's largest oil and gas acreage offering for a fourth time. "The bid submission closing date for OALP Bid Round X (has been) extended till May 29, 2026," DGH said on its website.
While it did not give any reason for the extension, industry sources said this may have been done to give potential investors time to study the new liberalized rules framed following the passage of the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Bill.
The 10th round of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP-X), which was launched in February 2025 during the India Energy Week (IEW) 2025 in New Delhi, was originally scheduled to close at the end of July.
In late July, the deadline was extended to October 31 and again to December 31, 2025.
The OALP-X bid deadline was then extended till February 18, 2026.
While the deadline for OALP-X was extended till May 29, the deadline for submission of bids under the fourth DSF bid round and the special coal-bed methane (CBM) round remained unchanged at February 18, 2026. But now that deadline has also been extended.
Under OALP-X, 25 blocks with a total area of about 191,986 square kilometres have been offered to bidders for finding and producing oil and gas.
The acreage on offer comprises six onshore blocks, six shallow-water tracts, one deepwater block, and 12 located in ultra-deepwater across 13 sedimentary basins, according to the DGH.
The round includes four blocks with a combined area of 47,058 sq km in the Andaman basin, which Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has been touting as having the potential to hold even greater volumes of oil and gas reserves than those found in exploration hotspot Guyana.
The round offers the largest area so far for exploration and production of crude oil, which is refined into fuels such as petrol and diesel, and natural gas, which is used to produce power, make urea, turn into CNG for automobiles, and fire household kitchens.
In the previous nine rounds, 3.78 lakh sq km area was offered.
The last bid round, OALP-IX, was the largest before the current bid round. The OALP-IX bid round featured 28 blocks or areas spread over 1.36 lakh sq km were offered for finding and producing oil and gas.