An insightful talk on ‘Strategic Security Concepts’ with special reference to ONGC Videsh operations at the ONGC Videsh, Delhi office by Mr Krishan Varma, former Special Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India,  kept the executives and the Board of Directors spellbound for over an hour. The talk was organized by the security team of ONGC Videsh, spearheaded by the ED- Security, ONGC, Mr DC Srivastava.

ED Chief Security enumerates the security challenges

ED Security in his welcome address underlined the need for such a discourse in view of the fragile global security scenario. “As ED-Security, I plan to bring the intelligence community and ONGC to interact closely, to secure the interests of the company and the country,” he said.

Mr SP Garg, Director (Finance), ONGC Videsh shares the security readiness of the company

Mr Varma, a perceptive and sharp orator, kept his focus on ONGC Videsh’s areas of operations. He discussed the security concerns of each project in great detail, underscoring their political and economic milieu.

Mr Krishan Varma, former Special Secretary, GOI, gives a riveting talk on strategic security concepts

As a well-travelled person with an experience spanning 35 years, Mr Varma ‘s sharing and interaction with the employees of ONGC Videsh was enriching. With his knowledge augmented by postings to some of these countries, he gave an in-depth narrative of the political climate and sometimes, their tumultuous histories.

Mr PK Rao, Director (Operations), and Mr Sudhir Sharma, Director (Exploration)interact with the Chief Guest

Concluding, he gave recommendations to enhance the security preparedness, which included suggestions like having a robust access control mechanism in place, physical security of installations, monitoring of social network sites, an architecture for screening of personnel, among other calibrations.

An engrossed audience at ONGC Videsh, Delhi

World Environment Day was observed under the aegis of United Nations Environment Programme on the theme ‘Go Wild for Life’ to raise awareness towards illegal wildlife trade and environment and to take positive actions to protect the planet Earth.

Employees and families of ONGC Videsh participated with enthusiasm in various competitions surpassing the previous record, indicating increasing awareness and commitment towards the environment. Awareness drive was carried out by HSE Group for one week on various topics related to the environment.

Mr. Narendra K. Verma, MD & CEO through his message to employees asked their individual commitment not only to change themselves, but also to encourage other people to change their habits and behavior, so that demand for illegal wildlife products falls, which can bring about a sea-change in attitudes and policies toward both the trade and its products. Our E&P activities should be damage-neutral to wildlife and promote biodiversity through sustained efforts, he said.

World environment day was celebrated on 6th June at ONGC Videsh office chaired by Mr. P K Rao, Director (Operations) and graced by Mr. Sudhir Sharma, Director (Exploration), Mr. Vivekanand, OSD, Regional Presidents, and Heads.

A video presentation ‘Biodiversity is US’ depicting importance of biodiversity and how it is getting affected by human negligence and activities and what we can do to protect it, evoked a great response from the jam-packed house. To arouse awareness, spot quiz was also conducted generating a good response.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Vivekananda, OSD emphasized the importance of biodiversity and environment for ONGC Videsh, which is operating overseas in 17 countries. Mr. Sudhir Sharma, Director (Exploration) implored all to spread awareness in the society and find meaningful solutions.

Mr. P K Rao Director (Operations) touched upon illegal wildlife trade and various measures being taken in our overseas operations for environment protection like cluster drilling, zero waste discharge, phytoremediation etc. He exhorted all to observe highest standards of HSE in international operations.

Focusing on the Government initiative on khadi, khadi memorabilia has been distributed and organic products were given away as prizes.

The celebrations concluded with a commitment to protect the wildlife and the environment.

Background:

ONGC Videsh Ltd. is a Miniratna Schedule “A” Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE). It is the wholly owned subsidiary and overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), the flagship national oil company (NOC) of India having net worth of around INR 1,84,000 crores. The primary business of ONGC Videsh is to prospect for oil and gas fields outside India, including exploration, development and production of oil and gas. ONGC Videsh owns Participating Interests in 37 oil and gas assets in 17 countries and contributes to 14.8% of oil and 12.5 % of oil and natural gas production of India respectively. In terms of reserves and production, ONGC Videsh is the second largest petroleum company of India, next only to its parent ONGC.

India is currently importing about 77% of its crude oil & gas requirement. There is a big thrust from Government to reduce import by at least 10% by 2022, which will enhance energy security of the Country.

Since the oil & gas resources in India are limited, a major contribution towards this vision is to be shouldered by ONGC Videsh through acquisition of oil & gas fields overseas. Recently it has acquired 15% stake in Russia’s second biggest oil field of Vankor from Rosneft.

On the other hand, climate change and sustainability issues put pressure on oil and gas industry. Thrust on renewables is increasing.

It is in this background and on the occasion of World Environment Day, students in India upto Class XII are invited to be part of this outreach program by ONGC Videsh. Students would select one of the topics and submit a research paper. Students would be given an opportunity to interact with the concerned officers in ONGC Videsh, however the research paper should be based on public domain information.

Topics:

1. Energy Security of India & ONGC Videsh – a case study
2. Sustainability challenges in E&P Sector, with specific reference to ONGC Videsh

Rules:

1. The program is open to school students (Indian nationality) upto class XII.
2. Interested students may email their applications by 13^th June 2016 along with a scanned copy of his/ her school identity card and a brief biodata to studentoutreach@ongcvidesh.in
3. The entry is to be in the form of a research paper broadly covering current scenario of oil & gas, energy security, sustainability issues, ONGC Videsh by 2030
4. The report should be around 20 – 30 pages and is to be submitted in soft form and should have recommendations/ way forward
5. The report shall be submitted latest by 30^th June, 2016 through mail to studentoutreach@ongcvidesh.in
6. All research papers will become the property of ONGC Videsh.
7. The research papers will be evaluated & best three entries will be suitably rewarded. Participants shall be provided certificates.

ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas investment arm of public sector exploration major ONGC, is looking to set up a crude oil trading vertical soon. The company, which is traditionally into the business of exploration and production, proposes to set up this vertical once it has sizeable hydrocarbon volumes to sell.

OVL is in talks with international players to set up a desk overseas.

“We aspire and aim to develop our own marketing capability to capture better value of our hydrocarbons and whatever we produce — actually a downward integration to capture better value for our produce,” Narendra K Verma, OVL, Managing Director, told BusinessLine.

Narendra K Verma, Managing Director, OVL

Asked if this was meant to help the Indian public sector oil refiners in getting committed supplies and good price, he said: “This is a purely commercial decision for OVL. Right now, OVL sells its crude through a tendering process, which has its own problems. Having a trading desk will make the task easier.”

Verma, however, remained tight-lipped on how soon the vertical will be in place and who will be the chosen partner, due to commercial reasons.

From its 14 producing assets OVL has produced 4.137 million tonnes of oil and 2.558 billion cubic metre of gas for the first nine months of fiscal 2016, which was close to the same period previous fiscal (4.144 mt of oil and 2.419 bcm of gas).

While he is looking at downward integration, Verma is also aware that fall in crude oil prices has adversely affected the working of OVL, just as it has impacted the operations of other international players.  OVL had optimised its capital expenditure for 2015-16 by 20 per cent to ₹8,000 crore.

“This is a global phenomena and OVL is no different. All exploration and production companies in the international arena are impacted by the decline in crude prices. Everyone has tried to reassess, re-evaluate and optimise their capital and operational expenditure in light of the new oil price regime,” he said.

“Even super majors also reported an adverse impact on their balance sheets and we are no exception. While the crude prices decreased, the cost of exploration and production activities has not reduced at the same rate, except some expenditure on services,” Verma added.

OVL has also been going through a consolidation process, which according to Verma is a “continuous process. We keep evaluating our portfolio and balance it with reference to the new realities of the business globally.”

While the company does not want to restrict its hunt for hydrocarbon acreages to any particular region, Verma said, “Africa is a happening place for E&P. At the recently held India Africa Summit, we had some good meetings with the delegations that came. We have some leads and we will follow those.”

OVL also proposes to expand its ties with Russia. Asked what has changed in terms of doing business with Russia, as the country has its own way of doing things, including tax issues, he said,

“Russia has a typical tax regime where both high-end and low-end are capped, except two projects under the production sharing contracts — Sakhalin I & II, one of which we are partners in — all other projects in E&P are guided by their tax regime. The tax regime has got a positive as well as negative”.

“In the low oil price environment, it gives comfort to the operators as net backs don’t slide down pro rata because the government take also slides down,” he added.

ONGC Videsh celebrated the National Safety Day on Friday, March 4. The initiative was conducted as part of the National Safety Day campaign, celebrated across India every year under the National Safety Council to enhance the safety awareness among people. The theme for this year’s celebration was to ‘Strengthen the Safety movement to Achieve Zero Harm’.

Employees and families of ONGC Videsh participated with enthusiasm in poster, cartoon and slogan competition in numbers which surpassed all the previous years; this indicated the increasing awareness and commitment of ONGC Videsh towards HSE. An online quiz was also launched in which the employees of ONGC Videsh posted overseas also took active participation.

On March 4th, Mr. Narendra K. Verma, MD & CEO through his message to employees asked their individual commitment to take care of their own safety, that of their colleagues, workers and contractors.

Mr. S.P Garg, Director (Finance) and Mr. P.K Rao, Director (Operations) administered the Health & Safety pledge in Hindi and English respectively to the large gathering of employees. While speaking on the occasion Mr. S.P Garg emphasized on the importance of safety in Oil and Gas operations and stated how one single incident like Macondo can wipe of the balance sheet. Mr. P.K Rao emphasized on the high importance of safe practices while carrying out operations and also emphasized on the need to adopt the best practices from our projects.

Mr. S.P Garg Director (Finance) administering the pledge

ONGC Videsh employees taking the pledge

The print copy of Sustainability report on recycled paper was released by Director (Finance) and Director (Operations).

Release of Sustainability report

An informative video on ‘How to avoid accidents’, HSE report by Head HSE on activities during the year were some of the highlights of the programme. Prizes were distributed to the winners and their entries were also screened. All the entries were much appreciated by all those present. The day finally concluded with a vote of thanks and with the resolve to achieve goal zero.

Director (Finance) and Director (Operation) distributing prizes

On 23^rd Feb 2016, the ONGC Videsh G&G Centre of Excellence at Houston, USA was inaugurated by Mr. Narendra K Verma, CEO and Managing Director, ONGC Videsh along with Mr. A.K. Dwivedi, Director (Exploration), ONGC and Mr. S.P. Garg, Director (Finance), ONGC Videsh.

The G&G Centre of Excellence has been conceptualized and formed to act as a think tank and resource base to augment the efforts of ONGC Videsh in its exploration, development and producing assets. The Centre has come up from scratch, literarily built brick by brick over last one year. The Centre is manned by a very competent team of G&G professionals with high education qualifications (all six G&G employees hold PHDs from renowned US and UK Universities) and work experience of major E&P companies of the world.

During the interaction with the team, Mr. Verma laid out his vision for the Centre wherein he elaborated that this team needs to develop work flows in their respective disciplines based on the best practices which they have witnessed and experienced in the major E&P companies. The first set of project data has been delivered to the team and MD mentioned that he expected the team to add value to the company through exploration success and managing and increasing production from developing and producing assets. Mr. Dwivedi was impressed with the credentials of the team and mentioned that if need be, the centre should also cater to the needs of ONGC. Mr. Garg wished the best to the team and hoped that the team can help ONGC Videsh in realizing its growth targets.

Glimpses from the event. Seen in the pictures are Managing Director, ONGC Videsh, Director (F) ONGC Videsh and D(E), ONGC along with new recruits of the G&G Centre, Mr. S.K. Pathak, ED, Hazira, ONGC Videsh team and Mr. Kartikay Sonrexa, Executive Advisor, G&G Centre and Mr. Rajarshi Gupta, CM-Houston.

After the inauguration, MD, D(F) and D(E), ONGC held a Video Conference from G&G Centre with the team of MECL and Colombia Country Office and reviewed the activities of Colombia.

Mr. S.P. Garg, Director (Finance), ONGC Videsh was awarded the prestigious CA CFO ‘Oil and Gas Sector Award by the Institute of Chartered Accounts of India in a ceremony held on 16^th January, 2016.The nominations were screened by a jury of eminent personalities headed by Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla and the selection was made among members from the entire industry segment in India.

Mr. S. P. Garg carries an experience of more than 35 years. He is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, the Institute of Company Secretaries of India and an Associate member of the Institute of Cost Accountants of India. Mr. Garg has played a vital role as a top leadership team of ONGC Videsh for the phenomenal growth of the company which is now present in 17 countries with 36 projects all around the globe.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Garg stated that the award is attributable to the efforts of his entire team and appreciated the support, dedication and hard work of team ONGC Videsh for this recognition.