Lok Sabha passes Oilfield amendment bill 2024

The Bill will play a key role in India's quest for ensuring energy availability, accessibility, affordability and security for the citizens and fulfilling the Prime Minister's vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047.

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Lok Sabha passed the Oilfield (Regulatory and Development) Amendment Bill, 2024. The Bill was earlier passed by the Rajya Sabha on 3rd December, 2024. The Bill intends to reform the legal framework to meet the current needs and market conditions and to make the sector more attractive to investors so that exploration and production of oil and gas could be increased further. The Bill will play a key role in India's quest for ensuring energy availability, accessibility, affordability and security for the citizens and fulfilling the Prime Minister's vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047.

Over the last decade, the Government has brought several path breaking reforms including a landmark shift from ‘production sharing’ regime to ‘revenue sharing’ regime for awarding contracts, simplified processes and reduced regulatory burden to promote exploration and production of oil and gas in India, release of previously No Go areas for new exploration, deregulation of crude as well as marketing and pricing freedom for natural gas. A crucial outcome of these major reforms, more than 76% of the active acreage under exploration in India today have been awarded post 2014.