Oil-drenched memories

An old hand recalls an earlier avatar of the PSE

The gfiles issue of June 2011, with its cover story on ONGC, sent me looking for my bottle, treasured for over three decades, of the first day’s crude oil from the first production well at Bombay High. I had not checked on the bottle for a long time and became anxious, fearing that someone may have unwittingly broken or junked it. I finally located it in a drawer, wrapped in a thick bubble film coat and securely cellophane taped all over.

That bottle, an after-shave bottle filled with dark crude, has great sentimental value for me. I was on the self propelled jack-up rig, Sagar Samrat, the evening before the first oil well was spudded at the Bombay High offshore oilfield about two hours before dawn on February 19, 1974. Along with the bottle, I have preserved a photograph of myself with the then ONGC Chairman, N Bhanu Prasad, walking on the deck of Sagar Samrat that day.

What is even more special about the bottle is that it could well be the only one of three bottles filled from the first oozing of Bombay High oil to have survived intact all these years. The three bottles were brought to New Delhi by AS Cheema, the then ONGC General Manager, Offshore – one each for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Petroleum Minister KD Malaviya, and one for me. I had requested Cheema to bring one bottle for me when I was on the drilling platform with other mediamen.

I wonder if Prasad too has preserved a similar bottle somewhere in his study. That was a great day for India. Every Indian was thrilled to hear of the success of Bombay High. The discovery of offshore oil came as a great morale booster for the country in the face of stiff non-cooperation by oil multinationals and Western governments. Malaviya had always been an industry hero but that day it was Prasad who was hailed as a superstar. ONGC had proven its credentials as the leading PSE under his leadership.

It is thus distressing to read today about ONGC remaining headless for over eight months even after the CVC’s clearance of the candidate selected by the PESB and approved by two successive Ministers. Appointments to high PSE offices used to be contentious even in the 1970s and there was some lobbying along with pressures and counter pressures even then but not of the type witnessed today. Prasad, an outsider, was selected and invited to head ONGC at a critical time by a panel of three high-ranking bureaucrats, one of whom was PN Haksar, then Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. Prasad’s working relations with his minister, Malaviya, were neither cosy nor tense – but balanced. He had high regard for Malaviya and accorded him the respect due but, at the same time never let him encroach on his administrative territory. Prasad never missed conveying to the Minister that, while he would keep his political compulsions in view, he would not yield if he felt it was not in the interests of ONGC. Whenever he went to meet the Minister or the Secretary at Shastri Bhavan, he made it a point to carry his resignation letter in his pocket!

Truly, Prasad was the best Chairman of ONGC. I once asked Malaviya to get Prasad to give a job to a young man who had just returned after completing a course in drilling from some Soviet oil research institute. Malaviya tried but the job did not come about. The ONGC people told him that the Soviet institute degree was not recognized by the UPSC and, consequently, by their corporation. I asked the Minister how he could accept that when almost the entire ONGC drilling operations were being conducted on the advice of Soviet engineers, and by Indian engineers trained by them. Malaviya said he would not be able to do anything. I then took up the issue with Prasad who immediately saw the logic of it and not only gave a suitable position to the young man but also initiated action for recognition of the Soviet institute

BS Negi was a different sort of Chairman. He was more of a scientist than a manager, though he did not lack managerial skills. The credit for putting geophysical surveying at the centre of exploration goes entirely to him. He was soft-spoken, diligent and polite and equally politely firm in his interactions with his Minister. While Prasad could often be brusque and utterly unyielding, Negi was cushioned and circumspect. He gave the impression of yielding but never really yielded when the cards were called. He was absolutely honest and upright.

After his retirement, I saw him one summer afternoon running after a DTC bus at the South Ex-II bus stop, sweating and huffing and puffing. He missed the bus amid the jostling of the crowd. I asked my driver to stop the car and hailed him. “Oh, Uniyalji, it’s you,” he said. “Please don’t bother. I am used to this.”

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