Oil and natural gas output from North East India will be doubled, besides ramping up refining capacity, entailing an investment of Rs1,30,000 crore over the next 15 years.
Releasing the Hydrocarbon Vision 2030 for Northeast India, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday said the region has enormous potential in the oil and gas sector.
“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we decided to prepare a separate vision document for the North East to take the region forward.The entire region has huge potential and requires specific attention and investment for its development,” Pradhan said.
The Hydrocarbon Vision 2030 for Northeast India sets a goal to “increase production of oil and natural gas by two times”.
“To achieve this target, Rs1,30,000 crore investment will be made by different players in the next 15 years in North East. This means, every year Rs8,000-10,000 crore investment will be made and most will come to Assam,” the minister said.
To increase the output, new technologies will be introduced in association with private players and the refineries will be upgraded to produce BS VI fuel, he added.
“We are talking to Schlumberger for exploration. We will get advanced technologies from the tie-up and this will help in increasing the output,” Pradhan said.
He also said the distribution network, including setting up of an additional 7,000 km pipelines, will be strengthened in the region during the period.
Of the Rs1,30,000 crore investment, Rs80,000 crore will be required for upstream activities of existing and new oil and gas blocks for exploration.
An amount of Rs20,000 crore will be needed for midstream actions, including setting up of four new natural gas pipelines, five new POl product pipelines and three new lPG pipelines.