Hike oil royalty, urges Gogoi

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, April 17: Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has requested Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Petroleum and tural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan to take necessary steps for Assam to get its royalty on crude oil and VAT as well as other taxes on the actual market price and not on the basis of the heavily discounted sale price, at a meeting held at his office in Assam Secretariat on Friday.  

Gogoi urged upon the Centre to increase the existing royalty from 20% to 25% in view of the locatiol disadvantages of the region, including Assam.

Referring to the Supreme Court’s interim order which directed the ONGC to pay crude oil royalty to Gujarat on pre-discounted crude price beginning from February 1, 2014, Gogoi urged the Centre that the same dispensation should be applied for Assam as well.

Moreover, the Chief Minister requested the Union minister to take necessary steps for linking small gas fields for power generation. In this context, Gogoi mentioned that the proposed Titabor gas based power project with a capacity of 50MW and the proposed Cachar gas based power project with a capacity of 50MW will get a huge fillip if gas linkage can be established with the intervention of the Petroleum Ministry.

Gogoi also requested the Union Petroleum minister for necessary intervention for a special programme piloted by the Oil CPSUs for setting up of downstream petroleum units, particularly in the medium and small enterprise sector, making use of the infrastructure created by the State government in the plastics, gas cracker and other sectors for generating employment avenues in the State.