The 9th Petrotech International Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition, which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on November 1, 2010 at Vigyan Bhavan, was kicked off the previous day with the inauguration of the exhibition by the Hon’ble Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Shri Murli Deora at Pragati Maidan.

On the occasion, the Hon’ble Minister alongwith the Hon’ble Minister of State for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Shri Jitin Prasada released the PetroFed publication titled ‘View from the Top – Oil & Gas Industry Survey on Global Energy Equilibrium’ produced in knowledge partnership with member company PricewaterhouseCoopers and in association with Petrotech Society.

As brought out in the Foreword to the publication by Director General, PetroFed, about 93% of respondents feel that de-regulation of petroleum pricing, including diesel and LPG, will have a positive impact for the industry and over 90% of industry captains opine that varying tax rates across the states in the country has a negative impact.  Similarly, 90% of the industry respondents believe that Government policies are the most important driver for India achieving energy equilibrium in the long run and almost similar percentage of the industry believes that CSR initiatives and CBM projects play a pivotal role in the positioning of the industry.

After the exhibition inauguration, Shri S. Sundareshan, Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas inaugurated the PetroFed pavilion bringing out key facets of the Federation.

During Petrotech 2010, Life Time Achievement Awards were presented to: Shri M. S. Pathak, former Chairman, Engineers India Limited for the downstream sector; Shri B. C. Bora, former CMD, ONGC and OIL for upstream Oil & Gas; Dr. A. K. Bhatnagar, former Director (R&D), IndianOil for Research & Development.  For the first time, a Life Time Achievement Award in the international category was instituted and awarded to Dr. Abdallah S. Jum’ah, former CEO of the world’s largest oil corporation Saudi Aramco.

During the three day conference the Chairman, PetroFed, Shri Sarthak Behuria addressed the Service Providers Meet on the second day on ‘Downstream Prospects in India’.  The Director General, PetroFed, Shri A. K. Arora was a Member of the Organising Committee of Petrotech 2010.

Organised under the patronage of the Union Ministers for Petroleum & Natural Gas and the Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas as the Conference Chairman, Petrotech 2010 attracted over 3900 delegates including about 600 foreign delegates with eight foreign ministerial delegates.  There were 359 exhibitors including 202 international firms and 10 country pavilions besides presentation of 368 poster papers and 74 oral papers.  The third WPC Youth Forum was organised as part of Petrotech 2010.  The event had four pre-conference sessions, three theme sessions, three round tables; 24 technical sessions; five technical theme sessions and was a carbon neutral event.

Click here to view presentation of Shri Sarthak Behuria and PetroFed Publication ‘View from the Top – Oil & Gas Industry Survey on Global Energy Equilibrium’