GUWAHATI, Sept 9 - The North-Eastern Region Oil Workers Coordination Committee (NEROWCC) has strongly protested the government�s decision to go for auctioning of 69 discovered oil and gas fields of the ONGC and Oil India Ltd.
In a press release the NEROWCC said that the government move to hand over discovered oil and gas fields was nothing but doling out national assets to private business, both domestic and foreign. Hundreds of crores of rupees spent by the oil PSUs only for discovering these fields had gone unaccounted, with no return on these investments, it alleged.
�The shocking terms of the contract are licence for exploitation of the fields for 20 years on a revenue sharing basis, open market pricing and open-ended marketing rights to the contractors,� the NEROWCC said.
Further, the contractors under the new model would be exempted from paying cess on crude oil to the government, which would result in transfer of crores of rupees to the contractors, the release pointed out.
�The shocking matter is that this new model, heavily loaded in favour of the private sector, shall certainly not remain confined to so-called marginal fields, but shall be extended to major fields as well. The new move shall put the public sector crude oil refineries in great trouble and will have serious adverse impacts on prices of petroleum products and further cascading impacts on the general price level,� the release said.
�The move is, therefore, at the cost of the interest of the national economy, jeopardising the energy security of the country and particularly, against the public sector oil companies, both upstream and downstream and is of course harmful to the employees in general,� the release further said.
NEROWCC has called for a strong protest against the government move.
