Deciding the question of whether hydrocarbon projects can be delinked from mining activities needs a holistic view, rather than merely looking at it from administrative and legal angles. Ignoring the ramifications of a hasty decision poses the risk of causing irreversible damage to the fragile ecology in states like Assam. A request from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) to the Central Government to introduce a separate category for hydrocarbons projects in the Parivesh portal of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) for environmental clearance has necessitated a policy decision. Under the current policy regime, projects for exploration and development for petroleum and natural gases are applied under mining category and requires forest clearance besides environment clearance and a go-ahead by the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) if the project area also falls in an eco-sensitive zone of a protected or notified wildlife reserve. The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has decided to seek legal opinion in the matter from the Ministry of Law and Justice (MoLJ) as to "whether the exploration and development for petroleum and natural gas is to be construed a mining activity as per the provisions of Oilfield (Regulation and Development) Act, 1948." The legal opinion will be crucial for the FAC to take a policy decision. The issue first came up before the Standing Committee of NBWL in 2018 relating to a proposal for a hydrocarbon project in Tripura. The Standing Committee of NBWL advised the Tripura government to seek legal opinion of its Advocate General, who gave the opinion that extraction of natural gas/oil cannot be considered as mining in accordance with Supreme Court order in the Godavarman versus Union of India case on a related issue. The Secretary, MoPNG also requested MoEFCC on 6th June, 2019 to delink oil and gas exploration from mining activities in response to which the FAC recommended seeking legal advice of MoLJ as to whether survey, exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas are to be treated as mining activity or not. The MoLJ, in its opinion, expressed the view that the specific requirement for certain specific activities, framing of separate guidelines is purely an administrative policy matter/decision and not a legal issue and hence, it is for the administrative ministry to take up the matter with the MoEF&CC. "However, if in the course of framing guidelines any legal issue arises the same may be formulated and referred to this Department for advice", the MoLJ stated. The MoEF&CC, however, observed that there is no explicit clarification as to whether survey, exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas from the forest land are to be treated as mining activity or not. A committee headed by the Additional Director General (Exploration) recommended in its report that two operations - conventional mining and exploration of oil and natural gas - are totally different and they should be treated separately at the time of online application through the Parivesh portal and separate guidelines be issued by the MoEFCC for their assessment and clearance. TheMoEFCC agreed 'in-principle' to the report but said that it requires more inputs to evaluate its impacts on the wildlife and surrounding vegetation, which should be undertaken by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun and after receipt of the WII report the decision to accept the said report will be taken by the Ministry. The idea of doing away with the requirement of forest clearance for hydrocarbon projects by delinking those from mining activities has been pushed for ease of doing business to ramp up petroleum exploration and development. The ecological catastrophe of the Baghjan blowout and subsequent fire sounded the alarm bell about how things can really go wrong without adequate checks and balances in resource extractions in a fragile ecology and biodiversity hotspot. The probe into the catastrophe revealed irreversible ecological destruction that no amount of monetary value can compensate. The SC, in one of its judgments on the Godavarman case, laid emphasis on the "Public Trust Doctrine" and held the view that "the role of the State cannot be confined to that of a facilitator or generator of economic activities for immediate uplift of the fortunes of the State. The State also has to act as a trustee for the benefit of the general public in relation to the natural resources so that sustainable development can be achieved in the long term. Such role of the State is more relevant today, than, possibly, at any point of time in history with the threat of climate catastrophe resulting from global warming looming large." The imperatives of climate change mitigation require prioritizing forest conservation to slow down global warming. The answer to the question of delinking hydrocarbon projects from mining activity also needs to consider whether it would it be prudent to allow rampant diversion of forests when the country's energy sector accounts for about 75% of the total greenhouse gas emissions.