India’s upstream sector undergoing progressive change after reforms: Puri

New Delhi, Jan 21: Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, on Wednesday said that recent legislative, regulatory, and policy reforms mark a landmark and progressive transformation of India’s upstream sector.

He underscored that these reforms, coupled with data-led exploration initiatives, have unlocked extensive investment opportunities, particularly in India’s offshore and frontier areas.

The minister, in his virtual address during the upstream-focused engagements in Mumbai, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to providing a stable, transparent, and globally competitive framework to attract sustained domestic and international investment.

According to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the programme witnessed strong and diverse participation from domestic and international upstream operators, E&P service providers, global consulting firms, leading public and private sector financial institutions, insurers, academia, and industry experts -- reflecting the growing interest across the ecosystem in India’s upstream reform agenda and investment opportunities.

According to the ministry, it was highlighted that as exploration and development activities scale up, capital requirements are expected to rise sharply and become increasingly front-loaded, necessitating financing structures aligned with upstream risk profiles and investment cycles.

Neeraj Mittal, Secretary, MoPNG, underscored that timely and adequate availability of capital will be a critical determinant of upstream execution, and called for sustained engagement between policymakers, operators, and financiers to strengthen financing frameworks in line with India’s upstream ambitions.

He noted the constructive and encouraging response from industry participants and emphasised that the focus going forward would be on effective and consistent implementation at scale, so that policy certainty translates into tangible outcomes.

“Financial institutions and lenders, including banks and insurers, shared perspectives on risk assessment frameworks, exposure norms and institutional considerations, while emphasising the importance of risk-sharing mechanisms and policy clarity to facilitate deeper capital participation,” said the ministry.

The ministry highlighted that the recent reforms complete a decade-long effort to establish a stable, predictable, and investor-aligned upstream regulatory framework, aimed at reducing interpretational ambiguities and supporting long-term planning as exploration activity expands.

--IANS