Rath and Rawat lobby for E&P in Nagaland
Passionate about Nagaland, Oil India chairman Ranjit Rath and ONGC director exploration Sushma Rawat are on a government panel to restart E&P in the volatile state.
Additional oil secretary Praveen M Khanooja will head the four-member panel, which includes a Vedanta representative. On September 12-13 (2024), the central government plans a series of meetings in Nagaland's capital, Kohima.
On the first day, the panel will meet state chief secretary J Alam. On the next day, they will brief chief minister Neiphiu Rio about what could be done to revive E&P.
Rio has worked hard to open up the state to E&P activity but has been thwarted by court cases and central bureaucracy, says a source. Constituted by the oil ministry in mid-July 2024, the panel has a clear agenda: remove obstacles to E&P in the oil-rich Naga Schuppen Belt and the Disturbed Area Belt, the scene of a simmering and sometimes volatile border dispute between Assam and Nagaland.
Eight oilfields lie in the disputed sections along the Assam and Nagaland inter-state border. Rath and Rawat better prepare to hear some harsh words from the Nagaland officials about the central government’s inconsistency and broken promises.
However, they are well suited to deal with these as they have both been working hard, making the case for resuming E&P. Nagaland government officials are slowly beginning to relent.
Take the case of YM Humtsoe, an MLA from the oil-rich Wokha district. On August 27 (2024), he spoke in the Nagaland legislative assembly.
"If the governments of Assam and Nagaland agree to share the royalty proceeds in the DAB oil extracting areas, Nagaland would have Rs276.5cr ($32.9m) as its share of royalty from the sale of the crude oil extracted from the DAB," said Humtsoe to the 60-member assembly. "For a small state like ours, this amount could fund infrastructure for transport, factories for our agro-based products, healthcare, education and sports; these will transform our state and generate employment opportunities."