Vijayaraghavan was speaking at an international conference "Strategy for Y2K and beyond" orgainsed by the Chemtech Foundation. He said that the process of fixing Bombay High could result in some fields closing down but that should be no cause for alarm. "ONGC and the government of India should repair and arrest the decline," he added.

Bombay High can rightly be described as the nerve centre of ONGC contributing to over 40 per cent of its annual oil production. Till April 1998, the field produced 2,400 million barrels of oil and 177 billion cubic metres of gas. Since its discovery in 1976, Bombay High was continuously exploited as the nation badly needed its own oil tosave on imports. This, however, spawned technical problems and ONGC, in the initial years, was in a dilemma to cope with the new complexities.

On gas, Vijayaraghavan said there were many issues which needed careful deliberation. Terminals for liquefied natural gas were being readied for 2007 but pricing still remained a problem. Terminal facilities cost Rs 3,000 crore, upstream facilities for extraction Rs 40,000 crore while transport would involve more money. "One would have to reckon with all this before concluding that natural gas is the best bet," he said.

According to Vijayaraghavan, coal bed methane was another important energy resource which would need to be exploited optimally. It was under the purview of the ministry of coal but has since come under the umbrella of the ministry of petroleum and natural gas. "Despite all the enthusiasm about natural gas, I would sound a note of caution on the side effects," the secretary maintained.

He was also of the view that in the quest for increasingdomestic production of crude, even further refining capacity creation could take a backseat. If this resulted in importing more petroproducts, the trade off would still be worth it if the country could enhance oil output.