Open Acreage

Picture a large, mostly empty plot of government land where anyone can request a specific corner to be surveyed and auctioned to them, rather than waiting for the government to decide which corner gets developed first. Open Acreage is simply any area not already under an existing exploration licence, available for a company to nominate for auction.

This concept is the literal foundation of OALP, the Open Acreage Licensing Policy, whose entire innovation was letting companies themselves identify which open acreage they wanted explored, rather than the government pre-selecting blocks. Once a company nominates a piece of open acreage, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons puts it up for competitive bidding, and the highest revenue share bidder wins the right to explore it.

Whenever news reports mention how much open acreage remains available for exploration in India, it is effectively describing the size of the opportunity still sitting on the table for companies to nominate under OALP.