The clearance, pending for the last three years, was finally granted with the personal intervention of the state chief minister Keshubhai Patel who called upon the minister of petroleum Ram Naik recently, Sanjay Gupta, joint secretary, energy and petrochemicals department of the state government told The Financial Express.

The six oil and gas fields which were awarded way back in 1994 include North Balol, Unawa, Dholasan, North Kathana, Kanawara and Allora in Gujarat. These were the six of the seven fields the company had bid for.

Though the state government had issued the letter of intent (LoI) for these in 1996, frequent changes both at the Centre and state level had contributed to the delay in giving the go-ahead.

With all Centre and state-level clearances in place, GSPC will now proceed to sign the production sharing contracts (PSC) with the government, said MY Farooqui, assistant general manager (projects), GSPC.

It is estimated that collectively these fields will have around 1.73 MMmt of oil and around 529.60 MMm3 of gas reserve. Development cost of these fields was earlier estimated at around Rs 40 crore, said officials.

GSPC, which bid for these projects alone, later roped in other partners including the Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC) and Amec Process Energy Heritage Oil & Gas of UK for the development of these fields.

GSPC will hold 45 per cent stake in each project while Amec will hold 30 per cent and the balance 25 per cent will be held by HOEC, said Gupta.

HOEC has been assigned the responsibility of operating North Balol and Unawa fields in which the other two partners will largely play a role of investors and also provide the support services. Similarly, the other four fields will be operated by the UK company with the other two contributing primarily as investors and support providers. GSPC, however, will be not be the main operator for any of the projects, said officials.

GSPC had bagged these projects in the second round of allotment of small oil/gas fields for development. The fields were discovered by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.