High fuel prices: PM to meet energy sector CEOs

Amid lesser than expected investments in the country’s oil and gas fields, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting top CEOs of oil and gas sector from India and abroad on Monday.

The focus of the day’s meeting is how to ramp up domestic oil and gas production to meet the prime minister vision to reduce import dependence by 10% by 2022.

India’s hydrocarbon resource base stands at 300 billion barrels of oil equivalent against which only 88 billion barrels of oil equivalent have been discovered.

Hence the country has strong potential for a future of oil explorers. Despite that, not many companies have come forward to invest in the sector.

In the first round of auction under the Open Acreage License Regime, only Vedanta got 41 out of 55 blocks on offer. The auction saw no demand from other major investors.

The prime minister is expected to discuss with the oil sector investors about what is really stopping them from investing in India.

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This will be the third interaction of Modi with global oil sector honchos where Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director at Reliance Industries Limited, Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Resources and a host of global CEOs will participate.

Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of Total; Nigel Hearne, MD at Chevron Australia; Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of GE Oil; Isabelle Kocher, CEO, Engie; Darren Woods, CEO, Exxon Mobil; Bob Dudley, CEO of BP Plc and Khalid A Al Falih, the Saudi Minister of Energy are expected to attend the meeting which comes at a time when India’s economic growth is getting impacted due to high global oil prices.

India is a net importer of global crude and gets 85% of its domestic consumption shipped from abroad.