New Delhi: Petroleum ministry knocks on investment body’s door for clearances

Move would benefit RIL, Cairn, BP, BHP Billiton and ONGC. The petroleum ministry is set to approach the Prime Minister-led Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) for fast-tracking the approvals for 20 offshore exploration blocks, held up for want of defence ministry clearances, despite the firms having signed production-sharing contracts. The move would benefit Reliance Industries, Cairn, BP and BHP Billiton, apart from public-sector ONGC.

OVL holds 70 per cent participating interest in the block at the llanos basin in Colombia

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the foreign investment arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has discovered oil on an onland block, CPO-5, in Colombia, it said in a statement on Sunday. “OVL has struck oil at two places in the first well drilled on the Block CPO-5 and produced 120-300 barrels per day on testing,” the OVL statement said. “The oil is heavy in nature with an API (American Petroleum Institute) gravity of about 14. To assess the potential and commerciality of the oil find, extended production testing will be taken up in due course for the remaining objects within the upper Mirador Formation at a depth of 9,533 feet,” the statement further said.

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court on Thursday directed the Centre to file an affidavit in a week’s time explaining why the court should not take punitive action against responsible persons for noncompliance of its order to supply CNG to Ahmedabad at a rate supplied to Mumbai and Delhi.

On July 25 last year, the bench headed by Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya ordered for conversion of all public vehicles to CNG and asked the Centre to provide gas to the city at the price at which it was supplied to metro cities.

New Delhi: In the wake of recent power outages in the city, Delhi government on Wednesday asked the petroleum ministry to divert gas supply meant for Pragati power plant to the newly-constructed Bawana power plant as it has more efficient machinery. The proposal, which has been approved “in principal” by the petroleum ministry, will increase power supply in Delhi by upto 60 MW. Sources said the efficiency of Bawana plant is upto 25 per cent more than the Pragati plant.

“Since we do not know by when other power plants like Dadri will start functioning back to capacity, we decided to use all our resources and have a makeshift arrangement to solve the ongoing power problem,” Delhi Power Minister Haroon Yusuf said.

Burdened with the task of containing fiscal deficit, the finance ministry has rejected the oil ministry's proposal to reduce the crude oil cess that could have given much-needed relief to upstream oil companies such as ONGC, OIL and Cairn.

The oil ministry had proposed to reduce the cess from R4,500 per metric tonne at present to R2,500 per metric tonne. The cess was hiked in 2012-13 Budget. North Block rejected the proposal, saying such as cut in the cess would lead to a revenue loss of around R10,000-R12,000 crore.

The oil ministry has moved two separate cabinet notes - one to raise cap on supply of subsidised cooking gas cylinders and the other to increase fuel prices, particularly diesel, by less than a rupee per month to pair it with market rates and eventually deregulate it in next 15 months.

The ministry has also proposed to reduce one-third subsidy on kerosene by 2014-15 and on cooking gas by a quarter in this year, government officials said. According to oil ministry's recent data, state oil firms are losing Rs 9 a litre on diesel, Rs 30.60 on kerosene and Rs 490 per cylinder on cooking gas.
The proposals will substantially reduce government's subsidy burden on diesel, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), officials said. The estimated fuel subsidy for 2012-13 is about Rs 166,000 crore, out of which the finance ministry has sanctioned Rs 30,000 crore and released the first installment of Rs 10,000 crore to state oil marketing firms this week.

Plans to charter floating terminal land-based project to be ready by '16

Petronet LNG Limited is planning to charter a floating LNG (liquefied natural gas) storage and regasification unit (FSRU) to bring LNG to the AP coast early by 2014 while it expects to complete the land-based LNG terminal at Gangavaram port by 2016. The company made this revelation after it concluded the public hearing for developing the land-based terminal on Thursday. “Petronet LNG Limited is fully committed to this project and is working on various options for bringing gas early, to meet the energy deficit, both in the state and in other parts of the country,” the company said while stating that chartering an FSRU was being considered to bring LNG much ahead of the completion of land-based terminal.

Hike being mulled as govt scrambles to find ways to meet Rs 1,60,000 cr deficit expected this fiscal on selling diesel, LPG and kerosene below production cost

Diesel prices may be hiked by Rs 10 per litre over a 10-month period and kerosene rates increased by same quantum over the next two years if a proposal being mulled in the Oil Ministry is accepted.

A panel headed by Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council Chairman C Rangarajan has proposed creating a mechanism to carry out "concurrent audit" of blocks where companies have invested over $1

As against planned gas production of 95.87 mcm, company produced 153.992 mcm

Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) has achieved highest natural gas production from its Gujarat gas fields for the month of November, a statement from the union ministry of petroleum and natural gas (MoPNG) showed. As against the planned monthly natural gas production of 95.87 million cubic meters (mcm), ONGC produced 153.992 mcm of natural gas from its Gujarat assets during November, achieving 160 per cent of the planned production. This is the highest production achieved among other exploration companies in the country for the month.