Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (“CAM”) led the drafting of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Rules, 2025 (“Rules”) pursuant to the Oilfield (Regulation and Development) Amendment Act, 2025 (“Amendment Act”). The Amendment Act introduced the requirement to obtain a petroleum lease as a pre-requisite for conducting any petroleum operations and further empowered the Ministry to formulate rules governing, inter alia, tenure, dispute resolution, treatment of mineral oil data, sharing of production and processing facilities, safety mechanisms at oilfields, unitisation and stabilisation of petroleum leases, sustainability practices and comprehensive energy projects . The Rules were drafted pursuant to such empowerment, taking into account the comments and inputs received from industry stakeholders during the consultation process.
Additionally, CAM led the revision of the draft of the Model Revenue Sharing Contract (“MRSC”) executed under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy, to align with the changes introduced under the Rules and incorporate recommendations received from industry stakeholders. CAM also advised on contractual, regulatory and transaction-related aspects arising under the MRSC, the applicable fiscal and statutory regime, rights and obligations of the contractor vis-à-vis the Government, and alignment with the Rules and other applicable laws.
The advisory team was led by Uday Khare, Partner; with assistance from Angira Chakraborty, Principal Associate; Lovika Tyagi and Sanjna Mehrotra, Associates.
Anuradha Mukherjee, Partner (Head – Disputes, North India); and Omar Ahmad, Partner; with assistance from Soumya Dasgupta, Principal Associate; and Nidhi Singh, Associate; advised on the provisions on dispute resolution.
Arya Tripathy, Partner; with assistance from Milind Yadav, Associate; advised on the provisions on intellectual property and data privacy.