Oil & Gas reforms on front burner
mid-February. The minister said he would write to all CMs, asking them to cut taxes as far as possible to mitigate the impact of the phasing out of subsidy on diesel. “Much more than inflation, the macro-economic stability at stake today is what provided the context for the diesel price hike,” he said. Currently, central and state taxes account for 31% of the retail price of petrol in Delhi, and a little over 10% in the case of diesel. LPG does not attract taxes.
Moily said his ministry has just prepared a Cabinet note, endorsing the Rangarajan panel’s proposal that all future oil and gas contracts will be based on a simple revenue-sharing criterion, without regard to cost recovery.
The oil ministry, he said, was going to soon place before the newly set-up Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) proposals to fast-track approvals for over 20 offshore exploration blocks which have not got defence ministry clearance for a long time, despite production sharing contracts being signed by investors. These are among 52 blocks awaiting defence/environment clearances where Indian and foreign companies have already invested $12.4 billion. India is holding back clearances for more than a fifth of the exploratory blocks it has auctioned in various rounds since 1999 to domestic and overseas energy explorers due to defence, environmental and maritime boundary issues.
Last Thursday’s one-liner from the oil ministry to the three state-run OMCs had merely allowed them to make “small price corrections (in retail diesel prices) from time to time.” Apparently acting
Be the first to comment.
