Oil Minister, Team to Hit the Road for District-Wise Energy Survey

Oil Minister, Team to Hit the Road for District-Wise Energy Survey

The surveyors, including execs of oil cos, will gauge energy infra, cashless facilities and LPG supply across the country

Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan, senior officers of his ministry and executives of state-run oil companies will fan out in almost all the districts of the country over the next 40 days to gauge energy infrastructure, availability of cashless facilities and issues of cooking gas supplies.

About 20 oil ministry officials of the rank of deputy secretary and above and executives of the rank of general managers and above at five state-run oil companies will participate in the programme that would cover 670 districts, according to an oil ministry official.

Pradhan will visit Datia in Madhya Pradesh while petroleum secretary Kapil Dev Tripathi is slated to visit Alwar in Rajasthan. Additional secretaries, joint se cretaries and other officers have been assigned one district each. Executives of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Oil India, Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum too have to visit a district each.

On their visit, everyone will carry a four-page survey sheet that will have to be filled with information from the respective district on refineries, terminals, storage tanks, LPG bottling plants, aviation stations, re tails outlets, kerosene and LPG dealerships, LPG coverage, Ujjwala Yojna beneficiaries, hassles faced in obtaining connections under Ujjwala, feedback from rural beneficiaries, cashless transactions facilities and rate of such transactions.

The officials and the executives will meet consumers, distributors, district administration officials and other stakeholders to understand the situation on the ground and how companies are catering to the local demand and implementing the government programme such as Ujjwala Yojna where poor get subsidised cooking gas connection, or the official push towards digital payments.

“The idea behind is to understand the adequacy of the existing infrastructure to meet petroleum demand in each district. Based on the outcome of this exercise, we will intervene wherever necessary to make supplies better,“ the oil ministry official said.

The visits, which have just begun, will conclude by March-end. Most visits are being undertaken in February . States such as Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Goa, where assembly elections are underway , will be covered after the results are out on March 11.

https://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31816&articlexml=Oil-Minister-Team-to-Hit-the-Road-for-22022017015025

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