Government plans to ease foreign investment in oil, gas sector.

With foreign investment almost drying up in India's oil and gas sector, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan recently promised an overhaul to make policies predictable, transparent and fair to investors.

Three years of policy paralysis and regulatory policy uncertainty over issues such as natural gas pricing had led to companies deferring their investments, resulting in domestic production stagnating.

In his opening remarks at the ministerial session of the World Petroleum Congress in Moscow recently, Pradhan said the Narendra Modi government 'intends to bring in policies which would ease the way for large foreign investments in the oil and gas sector.'

Stating that there was an urgent need to facilitate an increase in oil and gas production, Pradhan said his ministry was in the process of ushering in a new exploration and production policy after amending the existing New Exploration Licencing Policy (NELP).


ET