Anil's Reflections: A Lifetime Achievement Award

Sometimes, and when you least expect it, good things happen to you. Yesterday I got a call from India from the Chairman of ONGC informing me that I had been selected by the PetroTech Association of India to receive their" Lifetime Achievement Award for the oil industry". Needless to say I was thrilled that at the fag end of my life, my peers had seen fit to recognize me with this real honor.

Alas, medical reasons prevent me from going to Delhi to receive the award in person from the prime minister of India. But, courtsey of the organizers, I do get to speak to the distinguished audience and share some of the highlights from my career with them.

aaa Some photos of Dr. Anil Malhotra.doc

I have been busy writing my acceptance speech for this occasion.Below is the first draft:

" Prime minister, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

Please accept my apologies for not being able to be present at this august function. At my age, doctors are like gods and they said no international travel for some time. And I have to bow to their commands.

But I wanted to be present in some form or the other and this video is the best substitute the organizers could find.

“Lifetime achievement award” is an awesome recognition and I would like to pay tribute to the various people, my guides and mentors over my life, that have made this possible. To them all I owe an immense debt of gratitude

It was almost five decades ago that I first entered the petroleum industry. I was at the University of Berkeley and my thesis adviser Joseph Penzien led me, to a then esoteric, subject of designing offshore platforms in really deep waters. When I returned after my doctoral degree in 1970, I was persuaded by two people to set up the first offshore design organization in India in Engineers India Limited. These two, Lavraj Kumar, adviser to the ministry of petroleum and Manmohan Pathak, then the managing director of EIL, have remained my mentors and advisers for the rest of my life and I am deeply grateful to them for their guidance.

I am proud to say that the team that I put together in EIL for the offshore industry has been responsible for the design of almost all offshore systems in India, a no mean achievement given that we started with nothing in 1970. Along the way we were also able to help some sister organizations enter the field – Mazagaon Docks in the manufacture of offshore platforms, Vizagapatam shipyard for offshore multipurpose vessels and Garden Reach workshop for supply vessels. We helped create a number of service industries for diving, fabrication, installation and maintenance. So by mid 1980’s India had attained capability over the entire range of the offshore industry though not the capacity. Parallel to that effort was the increase in offshore oil production, which doubled between 1980 and 1986 ,and enabled India to reach a self-sufficiency ratio of over 70 % in 1986.

I left ONGC in 1986 as I felt that I had achieved the objective I had set myself when I joined the organization in 1980, though I recognized that there was still considerable work still to be done. But I wanted to examine how other countries had evolved into the next stage and so joined the World Bank to visit and learn from them. I visited China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Myanmar, and then moved to Vietnam in mid 1990s to advise them on the development of their entire energy sector.

One of my first tasks in Vietnam was, coincidentally, to help the development of ONGC’s Bach Ho gas field and to link this first gas field in the country to a power plant onshore. I was to remain in Vietnam for the next eight years working on problems as varied as oil development, power sector, renewable energy and rural electrification. The government of Vietnam was kind enough to bestow on me their Gold Medal for my help in the development of their energy sector when I left the country in 2005.

Around this time the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation asked for my help to create and develop their fledgling effort in the oil sector. I worked with their staff and this led to the discovery in 2005 of a number of gas fields on the east coast, one of which, the Deen Dayal field, is presently under development.

In 2004, the then chairman of ONGC, Subir Raha asked me to work with Indian School of Business to help prepare the next generation of oil industry leaders. I am delighted to see that some of the alums of that program now are on the board of various companies in the country including ONGC. As a matter I think that Sudhir Vasudeva was in the first batch of alumni.

So I have had a long and fruitful association with the oil industry in India and so am happy to be back here again with all of you and to witness the tremendous developments made in the oil industry since my time.

As I look forward, in my view there are three areas that the country needs to put special focus:

First, we need to transition to a gas based rather than oil based economy. In my assessment, shared by many distinguished geoscientists, India has a lot of untapped gas reserves. But the core of the problem is the absence of a national gas grid to take this gas to the consumer. Perhaps a Manhattan type project needs to be launched to design and build this grid. The National Highway project provides a blueprint. As a matter of fact, we can lay gas pipelines all along the national highways thus reaching all major cities of the country in a short period of time. A mixture of gas drilling in remote areas, development of regional pipelines and import of LNG in bulk at reasonable rates could provide adequate supplies to reduce our crippling burden of oil imports.

The second area is the increase in recovery from our existing oil fields. The overall average recovery in our oilfields stands at below 30% . But advances in technology like horizontal drilling; new chemical additives should allow us to increase this recovery factor. Many international oilfields have attained recovery factors of over 50%.

A third area lies in the realm of politics. The relationship of the corporations with the ministry and the politicians still remains in the past despite innovations like MOUs for performance. The issue really is the freedom that the corporations need to enjoy to take risks and, yes, make its mistakes.

.While the industry has certainly grown during the past thirty years and there are now a large number of actors, the fact remains that the biggest ones are the oil companies and they continue to be hampered in their operations by real, or at least perceived obstacles, not of their own making.

And finally, it is time to think big and to harness the power of technology much more than we have done so far in the past. When I returned to India in 1970 my objective was to help make EIL one of the best consulting companies in the world on par with Bechtel and McKinsey; and when I joined ONGC it was that the organization match the brilliance of industry leaders like Shell and BP. These still remain worthwhile targets and I urge those of you young enough to have energy and vigor to pursue these objectives.

So let me end by once again thanking the various mentors and guides that have helped me. And to say how proud I am for having been part of building India’s oil and gas industry. It is now for the younger generation to take the helm and I have full confidence that they will attain even greater heights than in the past. And you will have my best wishes in these endeavours."