Morung Express News
Kohima | March 7
Reaffirming his government’s commitment to resume oil exploration, Chief Minister, Dr Neiphiu Rio said opening up the state for oil and gas exploration and production will definitely improve the State’s finances.
Giving his concluding remarks, he recalled the first discovery was made at Changpang in 1973 which led to production in 1983 before operations were halted in 1994 due to various reasons including non payment of Royalty and production of petroleum beyond the permission granted by the State Government.
The Nagaland Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulations and the Nagaland Petroleum and Natural Gas Rules were notified and the State invited Expression of Interest for carrying in 11 areas/zones in the same year where permit was granted for exploration and extraction of petroleum and natural gas to Metropolitan Oil and Gas Private Ltd, in Wokha district.
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed but was subsequently withdrawn where the Gauhati High Court took up the case Suo Moto PIL and is pending for disposal at the Gauhati High Court, he informed.
Rio said, his government has been pursuing the exploration and extraction of oil with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas since August 2018 to resolve the deadlock and to resume petroleum operations in Nagaland in accordance with the special provisions for the State in the Constitution of India.
He also informed of the meeting that was at Dimapur on September 21, 2021 with Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas and the officers from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The meeting discussed among other things, allowing oil and gas activities in the blocks awarded under Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) in Nagaland and granting permission to ONGC to resume its operations within Nagaland and the DAB, he stated.
Consequently, an alternative interim arrangement through Tripartite MoU between GoI, Government of Nagaland and Govt of Assam and Bipartite MoU for resumption of activities in Nagaland was suggested.
During a meeting with the Union Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri on September 9, 2022, Rio said he has requested for formulating a policy specific to the State of Nagaland and other suggestions were made including- carving out relatively smaller size of exploration acreages to attract more bidders and extending royalty and revenue share to the people of Nagaland and setting up a refinery in Nagaland was also reiterated.
“We feel that these measures would be in the nature of an interim arrangement and will not prejudice the ongoing court case. It would only facilitate exploiting and extracting the oil and gas reserves in our State” stated Dr Rio.
He stressed on the need for an interim royalty sharing for the entire DAB area covering Sectors A, B, C, D, E & F stating royalty needs to be equally shared, in order to resolve the deadlock where a number of meetings were held between the Central Government, the Government of Nagaland and Government of Assam as well.
CM also informed that the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, GOI, constituted a High Level Committee to discuss resumption of exploration and production activities in Nagaland, a meeting of which was held on October 8, 2024 at Kohima wherein the State Government has reiterated the special status conferred by the Constitution to the State of Nagaland.
While further discussions were held with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on November 13, 2024, Rio said, the need to evolve a set of measures specifically for Nagaland was re-iterated and MoPNG stressed the importance of minimum economic capacity which will depend on the volume of production attained after exploration phase.
“Nagaland is rich but the people of Nagaland remain poor. I am confident that together we should find ways to explore and extract petroleum oil in Nagaland,” he concluded his remarks.
