State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has made four more discoveries since it first made an oil field near Asokenagar in West Bengal six years back but is still awaiting the state government's nod for a petroleum mining lease to develop them, Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday. ONGC notified the first Asokenagar discovery in Block WB-ONN-2005/4 on September 24, 2018, Puri said in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha. The discovery, he said was the outcome of continuous exploration efforts of ONGC in the Bengal sedimentary basin over five decades. As per initial laboratory studies, crude oil, which is refined into fuels like petrol and diesel, discovered in the Ashokenagar discovery is a light variety with American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity of 40-41 degrees and is almost similar to Bombay High and Brent Crude. "ONGC, accordingly, applied on September 10, 2020, to the Government of West Bengal for a grant of Petroleum Mining Lease (PML) for an