Taking into account the acreage Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) hold amid the country’s dependency on imports for oil, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said that the reserves held need to be monetised else the government would take it away for auctioning.
Speaking at BNEF Summit today, Pradhan said that the two state-owned firms cannot indefinitely sit on resources when the nation is a net importer of oil and gas.
“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.
