When Sudhir Vasudeva was recently selected for the post of chairman & managing director of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), he was widely seen as a natural choice. As the person in charge of the state-owned company’s offshore production, he holds one of the most important portfolios and is probably the most technically sound of all the candidates for the post.
To oversee ageing fields and ensure that their production levels do not fall too much is not an enviable task. But after taking over as chairman in February 2011, Vasudeva could well leverage that expertise to drive ONGC’s future growth. He will be the first technical person to take over after two successive non-engineers at the helm of the country’s biggest hydrocarbon producing company. The last engineer to head ONGC was B C Bohra, who retired in 2001.
While present Chairman R S Sharma is a finance man, late Subir Raha, who preceded him, was director (human resources) at Indian Oil prior to becoming ONGC chairman. The 64-year-old Vasudeva, currently director (offshore) at ONGC, has been with the company for 34 years. As a young recruit, Vasudeva was among the first tasked with creating infrastructure to produce oil and gas from offshore fields.
A chemical engineer from National Institute of Technology at Raipur, Vasudeva now considers himself a Mumbaikar, as both his family and the mainstay of his job, Mumbai High, are there. The affiliation could come in handy for an early confirmation of his appointment as his boss, Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, is a Mumbaikar at heart.