The Government will unveil a shale gas exploration policy by December-end.

“I am very confident that we will be able to bring out a shale gas policy by the end of this calendar year,” said Chaturvedi.

“We had hoped to bring it out by the end of 2012, and we are sticking to it,” the top bureaucrat in the Petroleum Ministry added.

Currently, India does not allow the commercial extraction of shale gas. Public sector explorers ONGC and Oil India have taken up preliminary surveys to estimate the shale gas potential in the country.

OPEN ACREAGE

Chaturvedi said the Open Acreage Licensing Policy was the way forward for exploration of conventional oil and gas blocks.

The launch of OALP has been delayed because of the National Data Centre, a prerequisite for the process, is yet to be set up.

Siddhartha.s@thehindu.co.in