Union
Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas confirmed the appointment of B.N.Talukdar
as the head of Director General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) on 5 February 2014.
B.N.Talukdar
will take charge as the new Director General of the DGH on 6 February 2014. He
is currently serving as the Director for exploration in Oil India Ltd. (OIL). He
will succeed Rajiv Narayan Choubey who was appointed by the former Union Oil
Minister S Jaipal Reddy as the DG of DGH in June 2012. Choubey is a 1981 batch
IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre.
The confirmation of Talukdar
as the head of the DGH came six months after his name was suggested by a
government appointed search panel in August 2013. The search panel was headed
by the Petroleum Secretary Vivek Rae.
Talukdar
has over 37 years experience in the petroleum industry. He is an active member
of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, USA and functioned as the President of
the Delhi Chapter of SPE. He is also closely associated with the American
Association of Petroleum Geologists and Society of Petroleum Geophysicists. The
appointment of Talukdar is significant in the sense that for the first time in
the history of DGH a technocrat has been appointed as the head of the DGH. This
signals an end to the tradition of handpicking a bureaucrat to head the DGH and
is expected to bring in more transparency in the appointment of top government
posts.
About DGH
The
Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) was established in 1993 under
the administrative control of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas through
Government of India Resolution. Objectives of DGH are to promote sound
management of the oil and natural gas resources having a balanced regard for
environment, safety, technological and economic aspects of the petroleum
activity.
