The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply today that the Government is encouraging Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in order to supplement domestic investment and technological capabilities in the petroleum sector.

The present FDI policy for petroleum & natural gas sector allows 100% automatic route for exploration and production, refining by the private companies (for public sector companies 49% on automatic route without any divestment or dilution of domestic equity in the existing PSUs), marketing of petroleum products, pipelines, storage and LNG regasification infrastructure and all related services, subject to the existing sectoral policy and regulatory framework in the oil and gas sector.