The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has resumed 8,363 oil and gas projects worth Rs 5.88 trillion in a bid to revive economy from the pandemic. The domestic oil and natural gas companies have planned operational expenditure (opex) of about Rs 416.72 billion during 2020-21 to generate around 145 million labor days of direct and indirect employment. Of which, Rs 112.96 billion has already been spent on creating 44 million labor days of employment. According to the MoPNG, around 8,363 oil and gas projects are currently ongoing involving a capital expenditure (capex) of Rs 1.2 trillion.
The projects are being undertaken by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), GAIL India Limited, Oil India Limited and HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited. As on August 15, 2020, about Rs 265.76 billion has already been spent in the current fiscal period on these projects. Besides, they have generated direct and indirect employment of around 44 million man-days through opex and have spent around Rs 32.58 billion to resolve labor-related issues.
BPCL has resumed work on 2,118 projects involving capex of around Rs 503 billion in a span of three years. These projects include laying of pipelines, city gas distribution, refinery, petrochemicals, bio-refineries and marketing infrastructure projects, amongst others. BPCL plans to incur an investment of Rs 95.97 billion in the current year, of which it has already spent Rs 16.50 billion. It has planned an employment oriented opex of about Rs 69 crore for the current year. Of which, Rs 21 billion has already been spent to generate around 13.4 million man-days of employment. Besides, it has spent Rs 3.80 billion on labour wages alone as of August 15, 2020.