State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) said on Tuesday Alka Mittal, the company’s director, human resources, has taken over additional charge as its chairperson and managing director. Mittal, who is the senior-most director on the company’s board, becomes the first woman to head the country’s largest oil and gas producer.
Mittal takes the helm at a time when ONGC is looking towards private partnerships to increase production from its major hydrocarbon fields. Union ministry of petroleum and natural gas additional secretary Amar Nath had recently written to ONGC’s former chairman Subhash Kumar asking the company to consider divesting 60% stake in the country’s largest producing oil and gas assets in Mumbai offshore.
A postgraduate in economics, MBA and doctorate in commerce and business studies, Mittal joined ONGC in 1985. She is also the first woman to hold the charge of a full-time director at ONGC. Mittal is said to be the mind behind the company’s ‘People’s Connect’ initiative to facilitate knowledge sharing from superannuating employees to young professionals in the organisation.
She is an executive committee member of the National Institute of Personnel Management, and till recently, was president of the Forum for Women in Public Sector.ONGC, which produces about 65% of domestic crude oil, supplied 5.5 million tonne of crude oil in the quarter ended September from its ageing oilfields, recording an annual drop of 3.8%.
Its natural gas output fell 7% year-on-year to 5.5 billion cubic metres in the same period. The company attributed the drop in crude oil and gas production mainly to the restrictive conditions created by cyclone Tauktae and the impact of Covid-19.
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