Union government to auction oil fields in possession of ONGC, Oil India to increase hydrocarbon manufacturing: Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan

New Delhi: – The huge oil stocks in possession of ONGC and IOL will be auctioned to increase fuel manufacturing in India. The third state of auctions for the Discovered Small Field (DSF) started on Sunday. Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan made this announcement at this time. The ONGC and IOL cannot indefinitely sit pretty on the discovered oil fields. Union Minister Pradhan said that these belong to the country; thus, they will be monetised through auctions.

The third round of internal auction for the 32 DSF blocks of oil and natural gas has started. Union Minister Pradhan said ‘These oil and fuel stocks belong to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India Limited. These leading oil exploration companies have discovered these blocks. But as these are small areas, they do not become economically viable for these companies to explore and extract oil. Therefore, these blocks are being auctioned.’

Pradhan underlined, at this time, that next time the auctions will not be limited only to DSF blocks and even the big blocks will be available in the auction. ‘Director-General of Hydrocarbon’ has been assigned all the authority to locate and identify these blocks that can be auctioned. Fuel stocks do not belong to any company, but they are the country’s wealth. Pradhan clarified that if these fuel stocks cannot be used and monetised, a new system will have to be brought in.

Pradhan said that any discovered oil block not in production would be made available to interested companies through auctions. The ‘Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi’ attitude will not work anymore. Some bold decisions will have to be taken. Especially the government oil companies will have to make these decisions to monetise this fuel wealth, which is lying idle.

Pradhan reprimanded the Oil companies saying ‘85% of the country’s fuel requirement has to be fulfilled through imports. Therefore, the resources cannot be kept idle. The oil companies cannot sit pretty on such assets forever.’

Meanwhile, out of the 32 blocks in the auction, 11 oil blocks are on the coastline, 20 are in the sea near the coast and one is a deep-sea block. It is said that the total reserves in these blocks are to the tune of 230 million tonnes of oil and natural gas. Before this, in 2016, 16 DSF blocks had been auctioned. Whereas, in 2018, 54 DSF blocks had been auctioned.