Tired of inordinate delays in implementation of projects by the oil PSUs, the petroleum ministry has decided to take action against non-performers and fix responsibilities in an unambiguous manner.
It has told the companies that responsibility for completion of each of the projects ?should be assigned to a functional director and the performance of the assigned officer shall be recorded in his annual report?. This, in a way, means if the functional director fails to keep pace of the projects, it may pose a hindrance on his next promotion.
A recent review by the petroleum ministry of projects amounting to R1,000 crore and above brought to limelight that projects worth R23,860 crore of ONGC, GAIL and BPCL are behind schedule with some of them delayed by more than two years. The present procedure followed by the these companies for tendering contracts is primarily responsible for the delays and it requires substantial improvement, feels government.
Petroleum secretary Saurabh Chandra is believed to have said that other than the functional director responsible for the project, an executive director and chief general manager be also made personally responsible for timely completion of assigned projects. ?The performance should be regularly monitored at every Board meeting. Any change in the present Board-approved commissioning date would be preceded by fixing responsibility,? an official told FE.
According to the data with the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, of 84 projects under the petroleum ministry (worth R150 crore and above), 53 projects are delayed, of this 25 projects are delayed for more than 2 years. When reviewed, it was found that a number of projects that were to be completed in two to three years are facing inordinate delays of five to 10 years.
Chandra is believed to have told ONGC chairman and managing director DK Sarraf to take concrete steps to facilitate completion of important pending projects through a robust project management system that would help increase the production of crude oil and natural gas. Recently, ONGC had decided to overhaul its procurement process. The Maharatna firm’s board had given a go-ahead to implement recommendations by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that would help to select the ?most economically advantageous? tender instead of just lower cost, which has been the practice so far.