Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday put state-owned ONGC and OIL on notice saying oil and gas reserves they hold need to be monetised through joint ventures with domain experts or the government will take them away and auction them.

Speaking at BNEF Summit, he said state-owned firms cannot indefinitely sit on resources when the nation is a net importer of oil and gas. Despite In-dia bidding out acreages to private and other companies since the 1990s, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) hold a sizeable number of acreage for years, he said.

We have asked them to do two things – do it yourself, (produce oil and gas) through some joint venture (with domain experts and foreign companies) (and) through a new business model. But the government cannot permit you to hold resources for an indefinite time, he said. ONGC and OIL, which discovered and brought to production all of India’s eight sedimentary basins, pro-duce about three-fourths of the nation’s oil and gas.

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