Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India on the drafting of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Rules, 2025

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.

About Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas:

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) is India’s leading law firm with a global reputation of being trusted advisers to its clients. The Firm advises a large and diverse set of clients, including domestic and foreign commercial enterprises, financial institutions, private equity and venture capital funds, start-ups, government and regulatory bodies. The Firm’s generalists, specialists and senior ex-regulators expertly guide clients across a spectrum of transactions, sectors and regulations. With over 1200 lawyers including 220 Partners, the Firm is a full-service law firm with offices in key business centres at Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, GIFT City, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

The Firm has been named “Law Firm of the Year 2025” and consistently recognised as “Best Overall Law Firm” by the IBLJ Indian Law Firm Awards. It received “National Law Firm of the Year: India” at the IFLR Asia-Pacific Awards for the second consecutive year in 2023 and 2022 and “Innovation in Advancing Markets” award at the FT Innovative Lawyers Asia Pacific 2022 Awards. The Firm also won “India Deal Firm of the Year” at the ALB India Awards and “Firm of the Year” at the IFLR1000 India Awards in 2022.