In a significant decision, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has directed the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry to carry out a revamp of the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) within three months with focus on strengthening its technical, legal and financial aspects to make it a world class body for better negotiation and monitoring capabilities.
The decision to strengthen the DGH comes in view of the increasing number of production-sharing contracts (PSCs), cases of arbitration and other legal matters. The Petroleum Ministry has also been pressing for a revamp of DGH. It has also wanted a senior official be posted as DGH to fulfil the objectives of the organisation. The decision to revamp the DGH was taken at a meeting held in the PMO recently on issues relating to oil and gas.
Recruitment
The DGH, who will be put in place after the revamp, will initiate necessary steps for recruitment of necessary technical staff experienced enough to carry out their tasks smoothly. At present, the staff of DGH is drawn from various public sector undertakings (PSUs) engaged in exploration of hydrocarbons such as ONGC, Oil India Ltd. and GAIL India.
Separate cell
Similarly, the PMO and the Petroleum Ministry also agreed that, rather than floating a separate special purpose vehicle (SPV) for securing statutory/security clearances for NELP blocks in the future, a separate cell be set up in the DGH to do this work.
The cell will focus only on the task of securing clearances and will start functioning most likely from next month. It was felt that DGH, being a Petroleum Ministry arm, was well suited to deal with the Department of Naval Intelligence and seek other clearances like the environmental clearances also.
The meeting was also informed that steps had been initiated to revise the PSCs in order to boost investment in exploration and production of hydrocarbons.
