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The Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Mani Shankar Aiyar has left on a three day state visit to the Kingdom to the Saudi Arabia on the invitation of Mr. Ali Bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Resources of Saudi Arabia. Shri Aiyar is leading a high level delegation which include senior officials of the Ministries of Petroleum & Natural Gas and the External Affairs, CMD HPCL, MD OVL and senior officials of the IOC, GAIL& EIL.
Speaking to media persons before leaving Delhi Shri Aiyar informed that Saudi Arabia has emerged as the single most important source of crude oil which is marked by a four fold increase in import of crude oil since 1999-2000. The crude oil import was about 24 million metric tonnes (MMT) during 2003-04 up from about 6 MMT in 1999-2000. The imports this year would be just marginally lower or approximately the same as in previous year.
Describing the importance of the visit, Shri Aiyar said that this was first visit of an Indian Petroleum Minister specially dedicated to bilateral discussions for accelerating cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector. Elaborating further the Minister said that his visit is taking place in the context of a very significant change which has taken place in west Asian oil market wherein about two-third of its crude oil production is being sold to the market east of the West Asia, as against the 20th century trend of about two-third of crude oil from this source sold to the market in the West. He also referred to his visit as an outcome of the first Asian oil Ministers Round Table held in New Delhi on 6th January 2005 in which Saudi Arabia participated as an important principal oil producing country and opted to host of the next meeting.
Shri Aiyar informed that during his visit potential for Indian participation in the exploration and production for natural gas and further processing of gas for imports by India possibly as LNG would be explored. The possibility of Saudi Arabian investment in Indian hydrocarbon sector particularly in the refining and marketing will be taken up alongwith detailed discussions on draft agreement submitted by IOC to Saudi Aramco on R&D in hydrocarbon sector. There would be further discussions on the potential of Saudi Arabia holding commercial storage of oil in India and also on the longer term crude contracts for imports from Saudi Arabia.
RCJ/ KC/ min. visit to Saudi Arabia(28.3.05)
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