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Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, on Saturday rededicated Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) iconic drilling rig Sagar Samrat as a mobile offshore production unit (MOPU) at a ceremony held at Sagar Samrat, which is located 140-145 km west of Mumbai.

The minister later visited the ONGC Kendriya Vidyalaya grounds in Panvel Phase 1 to meet the energy soldiers of ONGC and their families.

Puri urged that there is a need to introduce new key performance indicators (KPIs) in the organisation, which are geared towards time-bound deliverables and efficiency.

ONGC possesses a large sedimentary basin acreage, which will go up even further in the coming days. It is imperative that the organisation makes extra efforts to convert it's 'yet to find' acreage into discovery fields, discovery fields into production assets, and production assets into maximum production assets, he said.

Teams across ONGC which are engaged in different processes of the three phases must re-orient themselves for accelerated achievements of these targets, Puri said.

The minister said that India is the world's fastest-growing large economy and the world's third largest consumer of energy, crude oil, fourth largest refiner, sixth largest importer of petroleum products, and seventh largest exporter of petroleum products as on date.

"India's energy demand is expected to grow at about 3 per cent per annum by 2040, compared to the global rate of 1 per cent. Further, 25 per cent of the global energy growth between 2020 and 2040 is going to come from India due to our fast-growing economy and demographic dividend. However, India imports 85 per cent of its petroleum requirements and spent approximately $120 billion in FY 2021-22 on the import of petroleum products. India's Amrit Kaal cannot be realised without achieving energy independence by 2047," Puri said.

The minister then met the ONGC employees who manned the Sagar Samrat as a drilling rig and also the team which worked on converting it into a MOPU. He motivated the crew of Sagar Samrat, whom he called 'energy soldiers of the nation', to continue their efforts for India's energy security.

Puri highlighted how Sagar Samrat is a testimony of India's vision of producing its own oil when it was globally labelled as "barren" in terms of hydrocarbon exploration.

The minister said that in harnessing India's most prominent and prolific oilfield, ONGC has consistently committed itself to the pursuit of knowledge, continual excellence and the willingness to evolve technologically