India’s state-controlled Oil & Natural Gas Corporation has cancelled the bid process for its Daman upside gas development project (DUDP) off the country’s western coast, after delaying the award for more than four months.

ONGC recently informed the bidders that the DUDP tender process stands terminated, without further elaborating on the reasons behind the cancellation, two people with direct knowledge of the development told Upstream.

The DUDP expansion is crucial to ONGC’s strategy of ramping up gas production from its shallow-water fields off India’s west coast.