This is loot: Jairam Ramesh on govt plan to privatise oil fields

New Delhi, Nov 22: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday termed the government's proposal to give away the ONGC's biggest oil and gas fields to foreign companies as "loot".

Taking to twitter Jairam Ramesh wrote: "Soviets said Bombay High could be promising. Americans lobbied for drilling contracts. But for Indira Gandhi, self-reliance was crucial. ONGC was given the task, it did a superb job and took it further. Now, PM wants to sell these assets to foreign cos. This is loot, plain and simple (sic)."

Government is pushing public sector behemoth ONGC to involve private sector companies and service providers wherever possible to help raise oil and gas production.

"ONGC has to explore more so that it can discover more oil and gas reserves and bring them quickly to production to raise domestic output. The government is very clear that ONGC has to do more," Petroleum Secretary Tarun Kapoor told reporters.

India is 85 per cent dependent on imports to meet its oil needs, and a way to cut the high import bill is to increase domestic production.

Discoveries that the company hasn't been able to develop or areas that it hasn't been able to explore are some of the examples where ONGC can involve the private sector and foreign companies.

ONGC, he said, should identify areas where it can get private sector expertise and efficiencies.

These could range from technical collaboration to giving partially explored and undeveloped discoveries to private firms.