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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