Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan inaugurated the three day SPE Oil and Gas International Conference organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers at Mumbai today.
Speaking on the occasion, Dharmendra Pradhan said that the low oil prices are a challenge to the upstream industry but it has also resulted in lowering the cost of exploration and related services and we need to convert this challenge into opportunity to upscale production.
He emphasized on the aptness of the conference theme of converting resources into production and shared the various policy initiatives of the government like uniform licensing policy, pricing and marketing freedom and easy to administer revenue sharing models.
He also pointed out that suitable project management and technology innovation can resolve half of the problems of upstream oil companies even under the volatile price regime.
U P Singh, Additional Secretary MoPNG shared the interventions of the government in increasing the exploration activity like Pre NELP, NELP and subsequent new formula for gas pricing, policy on marginal fields, uniform licensing policy, freedom of pricing, open acreage policy and the role of maximum government and minimum governance.
He said the government was proactively taking all possible measures to provide a conducive environment to both Indian and foreign firms so that E and P activity in India could be developed.
Other dignitaries present at the event included K D Tripathi, Secretary, MoPNG, D. K Sarraf, CMD ONGC, U P Singh, Additional Secretary, MoPNG along with others.
