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 Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Friday invited private and foreign investors to participate in the growth of world's fastest-growing energy markets promising an attractive and rule based regulatory regime.

Addressing an investors meeting called to promote India's next round of auctions of discovered small fields (DSF), Puri said that the government has an open mind on attracting investment in the energy sector and is ready to participate with the industry to see that all concerns are addressed and regulations made attractive to facilitate investments.

In the DSF round III, the government is offering 32 oil and gas blocks with 75 discoveries to investors for bidding. These include 11 onshore blocks, 20 offshore and one deepwater area. These blocks, spread over about 13,000 square km, hold 75 oil and gas discoveries with a combined resource base of 230 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas.

These small and marginal fields were discovered by state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) but the government decided to invite private sector to develop it as it was not found to be viable by state owned companies due to small size and fiscal regime.

Under DSF, the government is offering liberal terms to investors that includes freedom price and market the hydrocarbon discoveries.

The government has opened round I and II of DDF round between 2016 and 2018 in which 54 blocks, taken away from the ONGC and the OIL, were awarded.