Ashok Varma Appointed Director-Onshore of ONGC

In its first oil PSU appointment by the new NDA government, Ashok Varma has been appointed director (onshore) of Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC).

Prior to his joining as the new post on June 19, he was heading ONGC's Eastern Offshore Asset at Kakinada, where he was instrumental in putting the Eastern Offshore Asset on production.

"Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Government of India vide letter dated June 19, 2014, has appointed Ashok Varma, as Director (Onshore), ONGC," the company said.

Earlier, Mr Varma steered Russia's Imperial Energy, a subsidiary of the ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), as chief executive, and played an important role in the Sakhalin project in Far East Russia.

The post of director (onshore) had been lying vacant since October 2012 when A K Hazarika superannuated.

Government headhunter PESB had K Sataynarayana, group general manager of ONGC, to fill the vacancy but he could not get clearance from anti-corruption watchdog CVC.

The ministry then forwarded Mr Varma's name of for clearances from anti-corruption agencies. After his name was cleared, it was forwarded to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet headed by prime minister.

Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan concurred with the appointment and ACC cleared Varma for the ONGC job.

Mr Varma is the first board level appointment cleared by the new government in a blue chip oil PSU.

Appointment of B Ashok as chairman of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) is pending with Mr Pradhan even as the nation's largest firm is being run with ad-hoc charge to one of the directors after R S Butola superannuated on May 31.

A graduate in petroleum engineering from Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, Mr Varma joined ONGC in 1977 as assistant engineer at Assam.

He was posted to OVL, the overseas investment arm of ONGC, between 1996 and 2006 and was instrumental in acquisition of 20 per cent participating interest in Sakhalin-1 project in Russia in 2001, an ONGC statement said.

Mr Varma headed ONGC's Assam operations as Asset Manager from 2006 to 2009.