India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has delayed by almost three months a contractual award for its Daman upside gas development project (DUDP) off the country’s western coast.

Further development of Daman is seen as crucial to ONGC’s ambitions of ramping up gas production from its shallow-water fields off India’s west coast, but the contracting has run into cost concerns, two people familiar with the bid process told Upstream.

Upstream reported in December that Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) emerged as the lowest bidder for the offshore project, offering a price of $670 million.