Indian Oil & Gas Sector to attract 300 Billion USD of Investments in next 10 Years

Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on  said that Indian oil and gas sector will attract more than 300 billion dollar investment in next 10 years as it will remain the most attractive market for the energy. On the occasion of signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) between Ten Public Sector Undertakings under the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (Oil PSUs) and start-ups companies, Mr Pradhan said that there are huge opportunities of job creation in this field and start ups must come forward to leverage the advantages they have as far as innovation and tech development is concerned.

On the occasion, 10 Public Sector Undertakings under the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (Oil PSUs) today tied up for funding 30 startup companies to boost the innovation in oil and gas sector with Rs 320 crore fund. The PSUs who signed the MoUs includes IOCL, HPCL, BPCL, EIL, OIL, NRL, GAIL, BAlmer Lawrie and MRPL.

MrPradhan said that the public sector undertakings should increase the funding under this initiative to Rs 320 crore annually, instead of just a corpus of the same amount. He said, "Maybe some company among these start-ups may exceed the balance sheet of their a partner company like ONGC." He said, “A month ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a challenge to the PSU’s to come out with innovative ideas for clean energy for cooking which has been well accepted by HPCL as it has started working on it and has tied-up with a start-up for the same.” According to a press note issued on the occasion, 3 to 4 new start-ups come up every day. Close to 4,400 technology start-ups exit in India and the number is expected to reach over 12,000 by 2020. India is also at the third place after US and Britain in terms of number of startups. The 10 PSUs included Indian Oil Corporation that signed the highest number of 14 MoUs out of 30. Besides, GAIL India launched a start-up policy at the event.

There has been a constant flow of applications ever since the scheme was launched by the 10 PSUs last year. Some of the projects that were selected include electronic leak detector for detecting body and bunk leak of LPG cylinders, self-sustaining low maintenance toilets, multiuse fuel from agriculture waste biomass, remotely operated vehicles for underwater inspections and converting waste plastics to high-value petroleum fuels.