Dharmendra Pradhan ends 4-Day Successful Assam Visit

The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum and Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan visited Assam from April 14-17, 2015. During the visit he toured extensively covering facilities of Oil India Ltd (OIL) in Duliajan, OIL and Indian Oil Corp (IOC) in Digboi, Brahmaputra Crackers & Polymer Ltd (BCPL) in Dibrugarh, ONGC assets in Nazira and Geleki, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) in Numaligarh and IOC Refinery in Guwahati. He interacted with various stakeholders including employees, union and local community.

Shri Pradhan met the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Assam Shri Tarun Gogoi in Guwahati on April 17. He informed the Chief Minister about the decision of the Government to increase investment in all streams of hydrocarbon sector in North East, increase in the exploration activities, expansion of PNG network, and ensure availability of petroleum products, including LPG in the remotest corner of North East.

During his visit Shri Pradhan reviewed all activities in hydrocarbon sector in North East in general and Assam in particular. All senior officers of MoPNG, all CMDs of PSUs under the administrative control of MoPNG and representatives of Private Sector companies working in North east participated in it.

This was for the first time that entire top brass of oil and gas sector assembled together in North East. It was observed that in order to implement Hon’ble Prime Minister’s instructions to reduce the import dependency by 10% by 2022, we need to invest heavily in North east to boost the production. The Minister constituted a high level committee under Additional Secretary to work out a Hydrocarbon Vision Document for North East by July 2015.

North East is one of the most priority areas of the new Government under the leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi, who believes that for balanced growth of India, North East must grow at a better and faster pace.

Assam is the birth place of India’s hydrocarbon sector and even today contributes about 10% of Natural Gas and Crude Oil production of the country.

Over the years, the production of oil and gas in Assam is decreasing due to various reasons. The Minister personally reviewed this and instructed to take steps to arrest the decreasing trend of production. He also visited and reviewed CSR projects undertaken by the PSUs. He also announced that oil PSU’s will be constructing more than 3700 school toilets in Assam.