The Hindu Business Line : `More foreign cos eyeing oil, gas sector'

MR SANJAY JOSHI (left), Joint Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, with Mr V. K. Sibal, Director-General, Hydrocarbons, at a meeting organized by CII `Building Partnership for Upstream Oil & Gas' in the Capital on Monday. - Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi , May 22

With clear policies in place, India is becoming an attractive destination for global companies in the oil and gas sector. Mr Sunjoy Joshi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum, said, "more companies are willing to come to India to join the largely unexplored sector of drilling for gas and oil after clear policies have been formulated as was evident from the fifth round new exploration licensing policy (NELP)."

In his inaugural address at an interactive meeting for promoting NELP-VI and third round of coal bed methane (CBM III) on `Building partnerships for upstream oil and gas' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mr Joshi said most of the sedimentary basins still remained unexplored. After NELP-V the Ministry had a series of brainstorming sessions leading to a much more rational policy through a new process of consultation, he said adding the process has not ended and suggestions and feedback are still welcome.Mr V.K. Sibal, Director-General, Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), said the Government was taking a number of steps to encourage participants from all over the world to come to India to explore the possibilities in oil and gas in the country. He said there was minimum interference from the Government in the biding process and all the deals, terms and conditions and regulations were totally transparent and available on the Net so that no one feels discriminated.

Availability of equipment

He agreed that there was a problem in availability of rigs and others equipment for drilling in the country but this was a problem all over the world.

He said the Government was thinking of setting up special economics zones for manufacturing these equipment in the country. Mr Sibal invited investors to come to India as there was tremendous opportunities in this field which had been largely unexplored and pointed out that the existing players who had taken their chance four-years-ago had reaped a rich harvest and made huge profits.