Narendra Taneja
The devastation of the petroleum and natural gas sector in the last four years of the UPA government has not been seen before in the past. The mining of gas and petroleum in the country had lowered down to almost nil. The permission for mining was not granted from environment to the space departments for years. Consequently, one after another companies in the oil industry were quitting. This resulted in the increase of the imports of the oil to almost 80% and about 50% of the foreign exchange reserve was spent for the import of the oil alone.
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When the NDA government came to power, the petroleum and natural gas sector was almost ailing in ICU. The first task which this government placed before it was to explore the ways to reduce the dependence over the imported oil. Energy security was placed in the priority agenda of this government. The PMO itself started monitoring the developments in the petroleum and natural gas sector’s development. Under the same efforts, all the prosperous section of people were appealed to give up the LPG subsidy. This led to a saving of around 10,000 crore to the exchequer. Prime Minister Ujjawala Yojana followed as a result, under which 5 crore BPL women were given LPG connections and the impact can be seen today country wide. But the greatest achievement of the government is coming out with a new policy for exploring and extracting petroleum and natural gas, which has been named as “Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy” (HELP).
(The writer is expert in Energy issues)
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