With terrorists using the sea route to unleash the deadliest attack on India in 15 years, an alarm has been sounded on security of oil and gas installations, particularly offshore areas, with companies offering to bear part of the cost of enhanced surveillance and patrolling.
Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on Wednesday evening met the newly appointed Home Minister P Chidambaram to 'flag possible threats to oil and gas installations,' official sources said.
Terrorists managed to land large quantity of arms and explosives in Mumbai using small boats that went undetected by the Navy and Coast Guard, raising an alarm that the same modus operandi could be used to target oil and gas production facilities in western offshore like oil wells most of which are unmanned.
Western offshore is home to the nation's biggest oil and gas fields with some 180 oil installations. Besides Mumbai High oil field and Bassein gas field, it is also home to Panna/Mukta and Tapti oil and gas field and its waters are used to ferry 70 per cent of the crude oil India imports through ships and the entire LNG shipments into the country.
Sources said Coast Guard and Navy will have to increase surveillance and patrolling to prevent terrorists from blowing up the oil installations or the ships that carry crude oil and liquefied natural gas into India.
Also, the west and east coasts have a number of refineries, pipelines and gas processing plants which could also be targeted, they said, adding that a 'quick-response' team may be constituted to respond to any emergency.
Navy, Coast Guard and the security apparatus of the oil companies would guard the entire perimeter of the installations, sources said, adding that patrolling at the mouth of Gulf of Kutch would have to be increased to prevent incidents.
At present, an Offshore Defence Advisory Group, comprising representatives of the Navy, Coast Guard, intelligence agencies and state-run firms like Oil and Natural Gas Corp, coordinates security of the assets in the offshore.
ONGC bears the about Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) spend on monitoring offshore oil and gas assets. There is a proposal to include private sector firms like Reliance Industries and Cairn India in ODAG for better coordination and they would be asked to bear a part of the security expenditure.
Besides, the companies have offered to bear a part of the security cost, sources said.
There is also a proposal to bifurcate the eastern and the western coast operations of the ODAG to ensure better security management. East coast, after the gas discoveries by Reliance and ONGC, has become hub of activity and its security needs would have to be dealt with separately.
The establishment expenditure for ODAG for 2007-08 was around Rs 1.3 crore (Rs 13 million). Besides this, expenditure on vessel and traffic management system for the fiscal was put at Rs 27.4 crore (Rs 274 million).
About Rs 40 crore (Rs 400 million)has already been spent on procurement of immediate support vessels this fiscal. In 1993, terror elements had set off serial bombs in Mumbai killing nearly 300 people.
