Daily Excelsior...Business

Air fare be reduced to encourage tourism: Dumal

SHIMLA, Apr 21: Himachal Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal today asked the Centre to play a pro-active role in development of tourism in hilly areas and demanded that air fare should be drastically reduced to encourage tourists to visit such destinations.

He also stressed the need for drawing a clear line of distinction between promotional and commercial tourism and said that the State sector would henceforth restrict its role to infrastructure development and leave commercial tourism to private sector

Inaugurating the 10th meeting of the Himalayan Tourism Advisory Board here he said that it was a mistake and misplaed priority on the part of the Government to venture into commercial tourism ignoring the more important infrastructural developmental aspect.

Dhumal said that the impediments to private sector investment in tourism should be removed and the financial institutions should be issued clear guidelines regarding financing various tourism-related projects.

He said that the days of subsidy were gone and the private sector would invest in those areas where the projects were economically viable and ensured reasonable profits. The Himachal Government has decided to play the role of facilitator and push toursm into interior areas. The Government was also trying to expand the airport at Shimla, Kullu and Kangra.

The Union Government had accepted the request of Himachal to open the Pathankot defence airport for civilians and the airport was being expanded, Dhumal said..

Director General, Tourism, Government of India, Atul Sinha, who is also Chairman of Himtab, said that tourism was the second biggest revenue earning industry with annual income of Rs 14,500 crore and was also fetching foreign exchange, besides providing employment to all sections of the society.

He said that Himtab comprising hilly States of Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttaranchal, Sikkim, Arunachal, Darjeeling and Meghalaya had unique potential to generate massive employment. While the Centre would extend all possible help to Himalayan States for development of tourism, the initiative had to come from the States, and private sector should be involved in a big way.

He said that Union Government had constituted a seperate eco-tourism cell to promote eco-tourism in the hilly areas bestowed with bio-diversity and natural beauty. (PTI)

Plans to improve oil recovery
ONGC to focus on deepwater drilling

RAJAHMUNDRY, Apr 21: The Oil and Natural Gas Commission is to go for drilling deepwater fields and chalking out a scheme to improve the efficiency of mining the natural resource owing to a high rate of depletion in the country’s oil reserves.

India has an estimated ten billion tonnes of oil reserves in deep water which is to be relied on mostly after less than a decade’s time, ONGC Chairman-cum-Managing Director B C Bora noted.

"Our oil reserves in shallow water total 21 billion tonnes. Altogether, the public and private sector oil companies have drilled out six billion tonnes of crude till date," he told a press conference here last evening.

The CMD, however, conceded that deepwater oil drilling had its blues. "For one, it is costly. Also, there is lack of availability of rigs. The entire world has only ten to twelve deepwater rigsdrill for use beyond 1000 meters below sea. The process of hiring a rig involves a lot of procedures, like tendering at the international level. A rig costs around Rs 300 crore," pointed out the CMD, whose five-year tenure comes to an end this month.

He said the ONGC would hire such rigs initially to activate its deepwater drilling operations in the western and eastern regions of the country.

The deepwater rig, Sagar Vijaya, which drilled the second well in deepwaters of the Krishna river, was not fruitful as the first well drilled there proved that the layer beneath the bed contained considerable quantity of gas only. "We are planning to shift the Sagar Vijaya rig to deepwaters fields off Amalapuram coast in Andhra Pradesh for drilling a second well," he pointed out.

The first well drilled in that deepwater field nearly a year ago is estimated to be yielding 3,500 barrels of oil and seven lakh cubic metres of natural gas per day. Deepwater drilling will be taken up on the western coast as well this year.

Mr Bora said the alarming situation of depletion of oil in the existing production fields has forced the corporation to launch a five-year scheme called "improved oil recovery".

The Rs 10,000-crore endeavour will be executed in 15 major fields which together account for 80 per cent of the country’s annual oil production. The proposed project would have its chunk of operation done in Mumbai High Fields.

Once the operation of the scheme is completed in the next five years, oil production from these fields is expected to increase by an additional 125 million tonnes in a span of 15 to 20 years. The present annual crude production of the ONGC is around 20 million tonnes.

The scheme has already been launched in eight of the fields, beginning with Mumbai High and western oil fields. It will become operational in the remaining fields within three months.

However, in a response to a question Mr Bora said India achieving self-sufficiency in crude-oil production was a far cry as the demand has been increasing far ahead of supply.

Referring to gas energy, the ONGC boss said the future alternative viable source of gas would be from Coalbed Methane (CBM), available in abundace in the country.

Of all, the experimental fields in Bihar coalfields have proved highly successful yields from wells compared to any other field in the rest of the country.

Mr Bora disclosed that the ONGC’s experimental fields in Jharia coalfields for CBM gas yielded 20,000 cubic meters a day from each of its wells at a depth of 1,000 meters. Elsewhere in the world, the daily CBM yield per well per day varied between 8000 to 10,000 cubic meters at the 1000 meters depth.

With a view to exploit more CBM gas in the country, the union petroleum ministry would invite bids for nine field-blocks spread over different coal-producing states. It will be completed by the end of this month.

Also efforts were being made to exploit the huge reserves of ‘gas hydrates’ occurring in deepwater areas. "This can become another alternative source of gas energy," Mr Bora said.

The ONGC is working with the National Institute of Oceanography and the National Geophysical Research Institute besides the Union Department of Ocean Development to first exploit methane and other gases present under the gashydrates and subsequently find suitable technologies to break them to derive gas. Japanese assistance has also been sought in this regard, Mr Bora added. (UNI)

Haryana allotes Rs 25 cr for Kandi project

CHANDIGARH, Apr 21: The Haryana Government has allocated rs 25 crore for the second phase of the World Bank-aided Kandi project which envisages checking soil erosion on watershed basis and restoring the capability of the degraded land.

Stating this here today, Agriculture Minister Jaswinder Singh Sandhu said this amount would be utilised for treating an area of about 10,000 hectares in the Shivalik Foothills of Panchkula, Ambala and Yamunanagar districts. It would cover about 400 hectares under horticulture plantation, 400 hectares under farm forestry and 1337 hectares under afforestation.

Mr Sandhu said the Government was emphasising more on the environmental protection by maintaining ecological balance rather than on intensive cultivation, which was resulting in unproductive waste and barren lands.

The two-phase Kandi novel project embarked upon the restoration of fragile ecology with the active involvement of local community, the minister said. In the first phase of the project, carried out during the period 1990-1999, about 46,534 hectares of area was treated and productive potential of Shivalik area restored.

The unique feature of the project is to involve beneficiary farmers in the implementation of the project who are authorised and empowered to participate in the planning, execution, monitoring the maintenance of the assets being created through the project funds.

While in the first phase of the project, he said, as many as 410 villages were adopted to carry out intensive development works, the second phase would undertake development work in about 55 villages. (UNI)