Vedanta in the limelight

Vedanta is in the limelight today morning. The stock price rose almost 3% to Rs.236.65, with some 4 lakh shares changing hands.

The company, which has bid for all the 55 oil and gas exploration blocks offered in India’s maiden open acreage auction, went on to win 41 of them.  Oil India won 9 blocks while ONGC won 2 and GAIL, BPCL and HOEC won one block each.

The 55 blocks have a total area of 59,282 sq km. This compares to around 1,02,000 sq km that is currently under exploration. Blocks are awarded to the company which offers the highest share of oil and gas to the government as well as commits to do the maximum exploration work by way of shooting 2D and 3D seismic survey and drilling exploration wells.

In another not-so-good news, Goa’s Directorate of Mines and Geology issued a Rs.97.48 crore demand notice to Vedanata, alleging that this is payment towards non-payment of royalty for the financial years 2011 to 2013. Vedanta has been asked to pay up Vedanta to pay the principal royalty amount of Rs 54.48 crore within 14 days and the interest of Rs 43.03 crore in the next seven days. There is no word about this yet from the company.