India's Hydrocarbon Outlook – 2022-2023

178 DGH: 3 DECADES OF UNLOCKING INDIA'S HYDROCARBON POTENTIAL This innovativeweb-basedportal conceptualized by E&C group of DGH to track and assess the status of applied permits and approvals by project proponents in the upstreamE&P industry is in line with GoI’s e-PRAGATI platform. This platform would facilitate by serving as a single point of contact for filing grievances by the user agencies (E&P operators) electronically in the following manner: Single window interface for managing the stakeholders such as Contractors/ Operators/DGH personnel/Central Ministries/State Govts./Cabinet Secretariat. The entire chain of regulatory authorities has been covered in its ambit and the portal is set to act as a “one stop shop” for monitoring and tackling the bottlenecks in statutory (PEL/PML) and regulatory clearances (EC/FC/WLC) by maintaining the desired transparency, accountability and responsiveness in the ecosystem. In the arena of advanced technology, e-governance has distinct place and it 8.5 Launch of Portals: The overarching priority in DGH is to continue its role as a facilitator to foster deeper and purposeful engagements with all stakeholders for enhancing E&P activities in India. ‘Urja Pragati’ portal to expedite the grant of clearances and ‘Upstream India’ portal to allow seamless coordination with E&P operators are currently in the service of the industry. Contractors and operators have to obtain several clearances fromgovernment authoritiesandnon- adherence to stipulated timelines have resulted in delayed licenses and clearances affecting oil and gas exploration and development projects in the country. Efforts have been made to streamline the policies and processes and URJA PRAGATI ( Upstream Response by Joint Action for Proactive Governance and Timely Implementation) is one step in that direction. Logo of Portal facilitates seamless communication with the stakeholders, thereby increasing the accountability, responsiveness and enhancing transparency in governance unlike in the present system where tracking is comparatively difficult. For impactful monitoring of progress in grant of licenses and clearances, following three tiers are incorporated in the portal: • DGH (DG, DGH chairs the review meetings) • MoPNG (for coordination meetings with State Govt) • ECC (Empowered Coordination Committee: This committee, which was established in the year 2019, is the highest-ranking body in charge of reviewing licensing and clearance bottlenecks). The highlights of this portal are: • An issue tracker (records/manages/ prioritizes the issues lodged by the stakeholders), • A document repository (an organized document management system shared by all the personnel in the division), • An e-communication module (a unified platform to track, review and archive the conversations between the stakeholders to ensure transparency and accountability), • An effective visualization instrument in the form of infographics for deriving insights from the data (maintaining the visuals that influence decision-making as in dashboards).