Comments
Taking on the Opposition’s corruption allegations in Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Limited (GSPC)’s Krishna-Godavari (K-G) Block venture, Gujarat Energy Minister Saurabh Patel said that the previous UPA government and its officials had approved the commercial viability of the project as well as the Field Development Plan in 2009.
“This itself shows that the UPA government and its Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) himself had accepted the success of GSPC. Hence, the investment of ₹19,816 crore made by GSPC was not a wasteful spend as alleged by the Opposition, which wants to score political points falsely indicting GSPC and thereby Gujarat government,” said the Minister.
Patel said that GSPC first focused on developing three discoveries of the DDW field in KG Block. In December 2008, the DGH had approved this project as commercially viable and going a step further, the DGH and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had approved the FDP in November 2009, Patel stated adding that the company has entered into the production stage of the Field Development Plan.
Challenging the Opposition charges on surrender settlement costs for surrendering the 37 blocks, Patel maintained that out of 65 blocks, GSPC did not succeed in 37 blocks. “GSPC spent ₹2,992 crore for these surrendered blocks. But such cases are normal in the hydrocarbon sector. Central PSU ONGC had spent ₹48,000 crore, while Oil India Limited (OIL) had spent around ₹1,800 crore for such surrender settlement.
Also, British Petroleum had to spend ₹48,000 crore towards exploration cost settlement,” said Patel.
Charges baseless The minister further mentioned that once the company begins commercial production, it will start getting revenues, hence the allegations of pending recovery of ₹2,319.43 crore from the joint venture partners Geo Global Resources and Jubilant have no truth in it, he said.
“We plan to recover the dues of ₹1,034.60 crore from Geo Global from its revenue share from the sale of gas. Similarly, Jubilant Offshore Drilling Pvt Ltd has paid ₹1,420.94 crore to GSPC so far.
The remaining will be recovered from the company from its share of revenue from the sale of gas,” Patel informed.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.