Union Government has constituted six-member committee to look at selling as many as 149 small and marginal oil and gas fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) to private and foreign companies to boost domestic output.
Why it was needed?
- India wants to cut oil import dependence by 10% by 2022.
- 149 smaller fields of ONGC, OIL and other explorers accounted for just 5% of domestic crude oil production.
- 95% of domestic production comes from big oil fields.
- So smaller fields could be given out to private and foreign firms, so that ONGC could concentrate on big ones where it could rope in technology partners through production enhancement contracts (PEC) or technical service arrangements.