A proposed amendment to the forest conservation law has been tabled with the goal of easing oil and gas exploration within the country. This amendment aims to grant explorers to access vast forested regions for conducting seismic surveys.
Image Credit: Pixabay
The primary objective of this proposed amendment bill is to exclude specific types of land from the scope of the existing forest conservation law and expand the range of permissible activities on forested land. The bill seeks to stop seismic surveys from being considered non-forest activity.
“This will help translate the prognosticated hydrocarbon resources to producible volumes by undertaking systematic scientific surveys in defined forest areas quickly,” stated Rajesh Kumar Srivastava, advisor to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
To gather the evidence for the producible hydrocarbon resources below the ground seismic survey will act as the first major step towards it. This is followed by the drilling of wells which helps to assist explorers in verifying the existence of resources and assessing their commercial viability.
The government has introduced various reforms in the past few years to expand the scope of exploration in the country. About 98% of the areas declared ‘no-go’ mainly due to security reasons for decades have now been opened for exploration.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Stay ahead in the dynamic world of trade and commerce with India Business & Trade's weekly newsletter.