Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday put State-owned ONGC and OIL on notice saying oil and gas reserves they hold need to be monetised through joint ventures with domain experts or the government will take them away and auction them.

 Speaking at BNEF Summit, he said state-owned firms cannot indefinitely sit on resources when the nation is a net importer of oil and gas.

Despite India bidding out acreages to private and other companies since the 1990s, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) hold a "sizeable number of acreage for years," he said.

"We have asked them to do two things - do it yourself, (produce oil and gas) through some joint venture (with domain experts and foreign companies) (and) through a new business model. But the government cannot permit you to hold resources for an indefinite time," he said.

 ONGC and OIL, which discovered and brought to production all of India’s eight sedimentary basins, produce about three-fourths of the nation’s oil and gas.

  The two, especially ONGC, have faced criticism ranging from not being able to quickly bring discoveries to production to lower recovery.

Pradhan said India needs energy for its ambitious economic growth agenda. "We want to reduce import dependency. We want to monetise our own resources."

 "So we have given policy guidance to our state-owned oil companies - either you do on your own through new partners and new economic model, (else) the government will after a particular period.