Cabinet approves deregulation of sale of domestically-produced crude oil

Union minister Anurag Thakur on Wednesday said that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved deregulation of sale of domestically-produced crude oil, whereby the government has decided to cease allocation of crude oil and condensate effective from October 2022. “Now, companies can sell their crude oil to any private company in the domestic market along with the government companies,”  said Thakur in a press briefing following the Cabinet meet on Wednesday. He said the move is aimed at ensuring marketing freedom for all Exploration and Production (E&P) companies as they will now be free to sell oil from their fields in domestic market. Refineries do not have permission to export the oil they produce, they can sell only within the country. Whatever domestic refineries produce they will be allowed to sell to both government and private units. He said government revenues like Royalty, cess, etc. will continue to be calculated on uniform basis across all contracts. As earlier, exports will not be permissible. “This decision will further spur economic activities, incentivize making investments in upstream oil and gas sector and builds on a series of targeted transformative reforms rolled out since 2014. The policies relating to production, infrastructure and marketing of oil and gas have been made more transparent with a focus on ease of doing business and facilitating more operational flexibility to operators/industry,” he added. Among the other decisions, the Cabinet also approved Computerization of Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) as part of which 63,000 functional PACS will be computerised with overall budget outlay of Rs 2,516 crore. The decision is likely to benefit approximately 13 crore farmers most of which are small & marginal farmers. “The move will increase efficiency of PACS, bring transparency and accountability in their operations; facilitate PACS to diversify their business and undertake multiple activities/services. This project proposes computerisation of about 63,000 functional PACS over a period of 5 years with a total budget outlay of Rs. 2516 crore with Government of India share of Rs. 1,528 crore,” said Thakur. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.