India will offer more oil and gas exploration blocks under the eighth round of its New Exploration Licencing Policy (NELP) in the second half of the fiscal year to March 2010, the country's upstream regulator said.

"We will be coming out with NELP-8 along with open acreage in the second half of 2009/10," V.K. Sibal told reporters on Tuesday.

Apart from the specific blocks to be offered under NELP, the open acreage system will allow oil firms to choose specific areas for drilling instead of having to select one or more of the blocks already carved out by the government.