MoPNG to invest Rs 1,300 billion in hydrocarbon production in the NE

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has proposed an investment of Rs 1,300 billion to ramp up hydrocarbon production in the Northeast (NE). Of this, around Rs 800 billion would be for upstream activities, Rs 200 billion for midstream, and the remaining Rs 300 billion for downstream activity. The capacity of the refineries will be increased from 7 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 16 mtpa. While some projects will be funded by companies through their own resources, other projects will receive assistance from the government in the form of viability gap funding (VGF). Besides this, 7,000 km of pipeline network will be added across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. Apart from production, the focus areas will include exploration for hydrocarbon linkages and trade opportunities with the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.