ONGC's Rs 25,000 crore mega project for liquefied natural gas, power and petrochemicals at Mangalore has been cut into pieces for implementation by other state-run firms."The various projects envisaged in the MoU signed by ONGC with Karnataka would be considered as having been signed on behalf of oil PSUs," a top petroleum ministry official said.The ministry has directed ONGC that the terminal be taken up by its subsidiary Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd in association with Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL).While insisting that ONGC should mainly concentrate on its core competency of exploration and production, the ministry directed that MRPL should go alone for petrochemical project.On power projects, it has stated that the oil sector company may go in for power projects with equity of more than 26 per cent. The Karnataka government was advised to identify a suitable partner for implementing the power project."ONGC may not be given the exclusive role of implementing all the envisaged projects because from a national perspective of oil security the exploration and production functions of ONGC should not be ignored at the cost of other such projects that can very well be taken up by other agencies," he said.Karnataka government had favoured ONGC for the mega project, saying, "There could be implementation delays if projects are subdivided between various agencies as the state government will have to enter into various agreements and conditions with each of them. There will also be lack of synergies."
