The shallow water blocks in the Mannar Basin, the ones closer to the coast, will be auctioned initially.
"We will not auction all of them at once. The deeper water ones, we will hold onto for the time being," Wickramasuriya told a forum on new business opportunities arising out of oil exploration in Sri Lanka held by the National Chamber of Commerce.
Cairn India, which was awarded one block in the first licensing round, found gas and condensate in the first two test wells drilled last year with the third being dry.
Cairn is now conducting more seismic surveys in preparation to drill a few more wells to properly define the reservoir potential ahead of commercial production.
Wickramasuriya said he expects better interest from oil firms in the next auction as obstacles like the 30-year ethnic war which ended in 2009 are not there and the economy is growing fast.
"There will be many companies willing to invest in Sri Lanka."
He said he expects at least 2 - 2.5 billion US dollars in investments in offshore oil exploration and drilling and production infrastructure in the next few years.
Total of France is one of the oil majors which have shown interest in Sri Lanka."They are interested. A team is coming for a data review next week," Wickramasuriya said.
