Other members of the group include external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and petroleum and natural gas minister Ram Naik, according to sources in the petroleum ministry.

The GoM will formulate Hydrocarbon Vision 2025-that is, policy statement for the next 25 years for the petroleum and gas sector. The earlier group, which was formed under the last Union goverment, had held two meetings, but little progress could be made because the then petroleum minister was not happy with the functioning of the group.

The reconstitution of the GoM has been necessitated because of the continuous rise in consumption, and a concomitant decrease in indigenous production, of petroleum products. As a consequence, imports of crude oil and petroleum products have been rising over the years.

In the last fiscal year, about 40 million tons of crude oil and 18.8 million tons of petroleum products were imported. In 1999-2000, the import crude oil is expected to rise steeply to 70 million tons. The import of petroleum products are, however, likely to come down to 13.5 million tons.

For 2001.02, the crude oil import may be as high as 95 million tons. The fact that international crude oil prices have shot up remarkably will hugely inflate the import bill.

India has about 0.04 per cent of the world's proven reserves of hydrocarbons. The prognosticated geological resources of hydrocarbons in the country are estimated at 21.31 billion tons, of which 61 per cent are offshore and the rest are onland.

Out of this, the geological reserves established are, however, only of the order of 5.32 billion tons. It is assumed that half of the prognosticated resource represents natural gas of which only 12 per cent has till now been established. As of the beginning of 1995, the balance of recoverable reserves are placed at 732 million tons of crude oil and 660 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

ONGC has identified 14 major fields where production can be increased with some more investment.