Essar Oil & Gas

quasi-administered price regime and the imposition of Universal Service Obligations is complicating their business plans

Currently, the company has around 20 consumers, based in and around Durgapur in West Bengal

The Raniganj coal block is India's most prolific coal-bed methane block that has already achieved daily gas production of more than 1 million scmd

Essar Oil & Gas Exploration and Production (EOGEP) is readying a proposal for extraction of shale gas from the Raniganj coalfields.It will place this before a steering committee for consideration this month. Currently, it extracts only coal bed methane (CBM) from this block."This committee comprises representatives from the ministry, the office of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and the operator," said Vilas Tawde, chief executive officer at EOGEP.In March 2016, the central government approved a Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP). The aim was to enable a uniform licence for exploration and production of all forms of hydrocarbons for an operator. It was thought that this would enable the contractor or licence holder to explore conventional as well as unconventional oil and gas resources -- including CBM, shale gas, tight gas and gas hydrates -- under a single licence. HELP also proposed to do away with the conventional cost recovery and production-linked ..