PM Modi always prioritised energy sector of Northeast: Hardeep Singh Puri

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always prioritised the energy sector of the North East, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said here on Monday.

The prime minister's priority is to put the region in the high growth trajectory and as such he is putting great emphasis on the energy sector, Puri said while participating at the run-up to the India Energy Week event here tonight.

Without giving any detail, the Union minister said several big projects in the sector are also in the pipeline in the region.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas minister was also present at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) and the Assam government to set up three bamboo nurseries that were signed on the occasion.

Each nursery will cover an area of five hectares to accomplish secondary hardening of tissue-cultured bamboo saplings and will be set up in Golaghat, Nagaon and Sonitpur.

The three bamboo nurseries will generate saplings that can be planted on 15,000 hectares of land area, thus creating a carbon sink that will fix 2.6 lakh tonne CO2 from the air/year.

He also interacted with farmers who are supplying bamboo on a sustainable basis to Assam Bio-Refinery, the first of its kind 2G Bio Refinery with bamboo biomass as feedstock, implemented by Numaligarh Refinery Limited.

Puri along with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Minister of State for Petroleum Rameshwar Teli flagged off a fleet of Electric Vehicle scooters by BIKOZEE, a hyper-local logistic Start-up supported by NRL.

The start-up aims to empower and equip economically marginalized communities with a range of job opportunities in the hyperlocal delivery sector.

Earlier, Puri along with Sarma and Teli had inaugurated the NRL Centre - the corporate office of Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL).

India Energy Week (IEW) 2023 is the first major event held under India's G20 Presidency.

IEW follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pledge at COP26 to cut India's emissions to net zero by 2070.

IEW is being held under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and is the all-encompassing international energy event supported at the highest level of the Indian government, with participation from all the public sector undertakings (PSUs), and officially supported by the Federation of Indian Petroleum Industry (FIPI).