Digboi discusses prospects of hydrocarbon industry
Guwahati 12-Dec-2010
The Petrotech Society and IOCL (AOD) jointly organised a seminar on, 'Hydrocarbon Industry Growth: Prospects and Challenges in North East' at Digboi on December 8 and 9 last. The seminar was inaugurated by the chief guest Anand Kumar, Director of Petrotech and former Director of R&D, IndianOil.
In his inaugural address, Anand Kumar highlighted the importance of such seminars in order to create lasting and effective industry-academia cohesion. Anand Kumar dwelt on the global oil and gas scenario, covered the Indian scenario and finally spoke on the importance of the North East in the hydrocarbon industry in India since it was in the North East at Digboi that oil was first discovered and refined, and also the first public sector refinery was set up in Guwahati. He also spoke about the challenges facing the industry in the North East today and more particularly the declining crude production. He called upon the academia to build their quality research base to meet the requirement of the industry and to help fill the projected shortfall in skill requirement in the petroleum sector in the coming years.
Earlier, SP Bordoloi, GM (i/c) of IOCL (AOD) presented the keynote address, and L.W. Kongwir, DGM (Technical), IOCL (AOD) welcomed all the participants. Also present was Dr JL Raina, Secy, General and CEO, Petrotech. About 75 participants from technical institutions in the North East and practicing managers from across the petroleum sector, viz, OIL, GAIL, ONGC, NRL, EIL, Guwahati Refinery, Bongaigaon Refinery, Digboi Refinery, North East Integrated State Office participated in the seminar. In addition, papers were presented by experts from Indian Oil's R&D Centre, Panipat Refinery and by E Unnikrishnan, ED(Pricing, Planning), HO, among others.
The concluding session was chaired by Subrato Ghosh, ED, AOD. Other panelists were Anand Kumar, SP Bordoloi, BP Das, GM (Technical), Guwahati Refinery and BK Das, GM (Technical), Bongaigaon Refinery.
The speakers expresseed their views on the future of the petroleum sector in the North East, the need to cut costs and improve production efficiencies. Another consensus was the need to go for alternative sources of energy such as shale gas and coal, in order to extract fuel from them. The shortage of LPG in the North East also emerged as an area of concern. Anand Kumar expressed the view that bio-fuels would be the source of sustainable energy in the future and that petroleum companies would have to aim at becoming 'Energy companies' rather than just 'oil companies'. He exhorted the technocrats to take the lead in developing solar and wind power in the region.
Subrato Ghosh summed up the deliberations and expressed the hope that the North East with its natural beauty and its pool of talented human resource would very soon become a self sustaining and self sufficient industrial production as well as consumption centre.
The seminar was witness to some very informative and thought provoking deliberations among the academicians and the practicing managers from the petroleum sector. G Sarpal from Petrotech Society presented the vote of thanks.
