New Delhi: Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar is believed to have told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that ONGC chief Subir Raha was a terrific CEO, but his firm had not done enough to boost domestic oil and gas output.
According to sources, Aiyar is understood to have told the Energy Coordination Committee, headed by Prime Minister, on December 16 that Oil and Natural Gas Corp had a "very poor" track record in finding new oil and gas fields in India and had neglected exploration and production for its downstream refining, power and petrochemical projects.
His eight-minute presentation on domestic oil production scenario focused mainly on ONGC's failure to put the riches it reaped because of sharp rise in international oil prices in E&P.
?ONGC was signing MoUs with state governments for power and petrochemical projects but was refusing to sign performance MoU with the Petroleum Ministry, ? he said.
?Rather than investing in finding oil under the Deccan Plateau, which Aiyar claimed to have more oil than the Gulf, ONGC was concentrating on acquiring oil properties abroad,? he added.
Sources said when Finance Minister P Chidambaram pointed that Aiyar's views on ONGC were a reflection of his media spat with its chairman Raha, to which the Petroleum Minister emphatically stated that Raha was a terrific CEO and he had no issues with him.
However, Chidamabaram said that India's energy security issues would be served as long as ONGC got the set quantity of oil either from its domestic fields or its overseas assets and wanted foreign firms to explore the Deccan Plateau rather than a company with "poor track" record.
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