The petroleum ministry has criticised ONGC Videsh Ltd for not providing the government with details of its overseas acquisition and has suggested that its parent company Oil and Natural Gas Corp should make available sufficient funds for overseas equity oil.
Sources said while OVL claims that it prefers to send only a brief note in advance to avoid leakage of sensitive commercial information, the ministry says the short lead time was not sufficient to examine equity participation proposals.
A proposal of the ministry states that the empowered committee of secretaries' decision-making process necessitates that "OVL provide sufficient information well in advance for the deliberations at the ECS meeting to be purposeful."
In the absence of a prior detailed agenda note, not only is the examination incomplete, even the participants at the meeting are unable to obtain and reflect the views of the ministry, it added.
OVL claims that it prefers to send a brief note and make an elaborate presentation during the meeting in light of the strict confidentiality required by the party inviting bids and the inherent likelihood of leakage of sensitive commercial information once these details are elaborated and circulated in the ministries.
Sources said the ministry also feels that OVL may have to go in for further acquisition in order to achieve the targets given in the India Hydrocarbon Vision 2025 statement.
And the way to do it would be by ONGC making available more funds for OVL.
The ministry is of the firm view that ONGC should concentrate on the business of E&P activities domestically and provide full financial support to OVL to achieve the massive target of equity oil set out in IHV 2025 by not diffusing its attention or its funds to other sectors, the proposal said.
IHV 2025 targets accessing 60 million tonnes per annum of oil through equity oil from abroad by 2025. But an analysis of assets held by OVL indicates that only 10 million tones of oil may be available to OVL by 2009-10.
During 2004-05, OVL's gross output was 3.714 million tonnes of oil and condensate.
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