Breaking the long standing deadlock between Petroleum and Defence Ministry on 31 oil blocks, the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) on Monday cleared 25 of them for exploration purposes.
The decision would ease investments to the tune of $ 2.71 billion which had already been made in these blocks. Also another $ 1.9 billion worth of investments will be made in the exploration activities in the next 3-5 years, a statement issued by the Government said.
In its almost two-hour long meeting held on April 22 evening, the CCI removed restrictions which had been imposed on these blocks by the Defence Ministry citing security reasons like asking companies not to locate any pipelines or structures on sea surface in the blocks cleared for exploration and production activities.
The Petroleum Ministry, which considered these restrictions as rather impractical, had held several meetings with the Defence Ministry, however the matter could not be resolved, thus leading to CCI's intervention.
Among some of the other restrictions imposed by the Defence Ministry, included those associated with setting up of submerged permanent structures by the Petroleum Ministry. The South Block officials had directed that these structures should be located more than 100 metres below sea surface or outside the (DRDO)/Indian Air Force (IAF) danger zone area.