 Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think everybody is getting seated. I want to say good morning, and I think it's time to begin at 9 o'clock here. I'm Carl Endeferth, and on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Wadwani Chair in U.S. India Policy Studies, I'd like to welcome all of you to this event focusing on India's energy options, and to hear our guest speaker, Vikram Mehta, Chairman of India's Shell Group of Companies. Mr. Mehta, we are very pleased and honored to have you with us here today. Before turning to the formal introduction of Mr. Mehta, I'd like to say a few words about today's event and place it in the context of the work that we're doing here at CSIS. At the beginning of this year, CSIS launched a new chair and a new program, the Wadwani Chair in India-U.S. Policy Studies. Its aim is admittedly ambitious, namely to unlock the full potential of the U.S.-India relationship for the 21st century. That's a tall order. This is something I have been working on since my days at the State Department, and I'm delighted to now have the opportunity to continue this endeavor here at CSIS. Our program will place special emphasis on policies to accelerate economic development in India with a wide-ranging agenda, including economics, energy security, climate change, regional security, and India's role in the world. I should also mention in this regard that we have established a formal partnership, the first of its kind, with one of India's foremost think tanks, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, known as IKRIR, which is based in New Delhi. Together we intend to promote policies that will advance India's growth and its collaboration with the United States. Now, it's in this context and with the very generous support of the General Electric Foundation that we are today launching a new speaker series to provide an in-depth perspective on India's future by examining various sectors of the Indian economy. And first up is India's energy sector, which brings us to our event this morning. As you are all aware, India's economic growth and energy security are intimately associated and in substantial need of modernized and diversified energy supplies, hence the subtitle for today's event, which is New Sources, Innovations, and Areas of Cooperation. Among the issues we have therefore asked our speaker to address are these. What is the current state of energy production in India? What should India's energy strategy look like? What is currently being done to improve India's energy outlook in terms of new sources of energy, investment, and habits of consumption? What will be the impact of the recent nuclear crisis in Japan on India's investment in nuclear energy technologies? And what will be the role for the United States in India's energy sector, both government to government and private sector? And I'm aware that those five questions, any one of which could take a full lecture. So I know that this is a rather large agenda, so I do think that it is time to turn to our distinguished speaker and let me just offer these words of introduction for Mr. Mehta. Vikram Mehta has been chairman of Shell companies in India since 1993. He graduated with honors in mathematics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. He holds a master's in economics from Oxford University and a further advanced degree in energy economics from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Mr. Mehta began his career with the Indian administrative service that soon moved into the private sector, joining Philip's Petroleum in the UK. He then returned to India as advisor to India's petroleum ministry before moving back into the private sector with Shell International in London with a portfolio that included Egypt. In 1993, as I said, he returned home again to head Shell's interests in India. Mr. Mehta is a member of the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industries, or CII, a good institutional friend of CSIS, I should add. And he is chairman of CII's Hydrocarbons Committee. He serves on a number of other boards, and I should also mention that he was a recipient of the Asia House's Businessman of the Year Award in 2010. So ladies and gentlemen, we are indeed privileged to have Vikram Mehta with us this morning, and I would ask you to join me in welcoming Mr. Mehta to the podium. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ambassador. I'm honored, I'm privileged to be here, and I'm particularly privileged to be the first speaker in this series that you've started. Well, as you mentioned, Ambassador, the range of subjects that you've asked me to address is vast. Each of those topics could indeed be the subject of a separate lecture. And this problem or the complexity is compounded by the fact that energy in itself sits at the nub of every policymaker's deepest dilemmas. How does a policymaker provide access to affordable and secure energy to the poor without undermining the fundamentals of the market and imposing an unacceptable burden on the exchequer? This is a major dilemma. How does a policymaker accelerate growth, economic growth, without degrading the environment? How do we extract the benefits of globalization and connectivity, and at the same time ensure that we respect and further our national self-interest towards self-reliance? These dilemmas are difficult to resolve. It's exceedingly difficult for a policymaker in a democratic setup to establish the balance. So what I want to do today is look at this, the set of questions through the prism of the political economy of the energy sector. I don't want to address each of those questions that the ambassador set out sequentially, but I do want to address them by identifying the issues that we face in India, by setting out the agenda that the government has laid out, and by perhaps focusing on some of the questions that we still need to resolve in the coming years, all of this within the backdrop of our Indian political economy. Let me start by setting out some basic facts, and these facts will in effect provide you with a profile of the energy sector. The Indian economy has grown by 8 percent plus over the last five years or so. During this period, the demand for motor gasoline and diesel has exceeded, has gone into double digits. So per capita consumption of energy in India is 500 kilograms of oil equivalent. The world average is 1,800, China is 1,090, and the United States is 7,835. Over the last five years, the international price of petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG have increased by around 95 percent. During the same period, the domestic price for these four products have increased by 35 to 45 percent. The difference between the international price and the domestic price has been made up through subsidies and by the losses of the state-owned oil companies. In 2009, 2010, the state-owned oil companies under-recovered, which is a euphemism for loss, $20 billion. In 2010, 2011, the number fell to $15 billion. The only reason these companies didn't enter Chapter 11 was because of the IOUs and the subsidies that the government provided them. The IEA has estimated that India ranks amongst the top five subsidizers in the world, next only to Saudi Arabia but above Iran. A fourth fact, the production targets for coal and oil have had to be scaled down. The Planning Commission has reduced the targets by 8 to 10 percent for both of those products. In 1980, India imported 27 percent of its crude oil requirements. Today it imports 80 percent. The IEA has estimated that the OECD countries require 1.1 barrel of oil to add $1,000 to their GDP. The equivalent is 3.3 barrels for India. Forty-five percent of our population is not on the commercial grid. They do not have access to commercial energy. They rely on firewood or dung to meet their fuel, lighting, and cooking requirements. The contribution of hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, and bio is 7 percent to the energy basket. The entire energy infrastructure is in short based on fossil fuels. The expenditure on R&D collectively by our state-owned companies over the past five years was less than a billion dollars. This is less than what Shell spent on R&D in one year. And the final fact that I just want to lay out is that there are seven, maybe eight different government ministries dealing with aspects of energy in India. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the Ministry of Coal, the Ministry of Unconventional Energy, the Ministry of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Power, the Planning Commission, the Prime Minister's Office. These ministries are headed by our Cabinet Minister. They have their bureaucracy. They have their vested interests, and they operate through their respective silos. Now these ten facts that I've just laid out are a jumble of facts I could have picked on a few others, but the reason I provided this is just to give you a profile of the energy sector. But also then to identify the five hard truths that the Indian energy sector confronts. These ten facts that I've just identified narrowed down to really confronting the Indian energy sector and the Indian policymaker with these five hard truths. The first hard truth is the demand of energy is surging. The reason for this surge is population, prosperity, and policy. The population rate in India has come down from 2.4 to 1.1 percent, but we are still headed towards a population of 1.5 billion people. India is entering the most energy intensive phase of its economic development. We have a huge plan to invest in infrastructure, manufacturing, power plants, and all of these are going to require massive amounts of energy. But over and above that millions of people are entering what is loosely referred to as the middle class. These are people who have middle class incomes, or if they don't have middle class incomes yet they certainly have middle class aspirations. These are people who currently may be driving or may be using a cycle but have the aspiration to trade up to a two wheeler and then eventually to own a nano car. The pressure on demand for energy is going to be huge as this mass of people move from rural India to urban India and seek to meet their aspirations. The policy environment has not been conducive to containing demand. As I've already mentioned, we are amongst the largest subsidizers of petroleum products in the world. The price mechanism has not been a countervailing force. Demand has been encouraged because of the subsidies on motor fuels, transportation fuels, and cooking fuel. It is estimated that the demand for energy in India will grow by 400% between now and 2030. These estimates are, in my view, simply estimates. But they do highlight the basic truth that our demand position is a worry. demand is surging and that is something that has to be considered very carefully. The second hard truth is that supplies of energy are struggling to keep pace with this demand. Coal is the mainstay of our energy consumption basket. We have abundant coal reserves. The reserves to production ratio of coal is around 85 years. And in principle, we should not have concerns about energy, but there are three major blockers to realizing the potential of coal. The first is that the coal mines are located literally thousands of miles or thousands of miles, hundreds and thousands of miles away from the main consumption centers. They're also located in areas that are currently facing social difficulties. The Maoist movement in India is concentrated in those areas where the coal mines are located. The second problem is that the infrastructure for bringing the coal from the production point, from the pit head to the consumption center is relatively weak and inadequate. Last week I read in the papers that 60 percent of the thermal coal bar plants in India had less than seven days of coal stocks because the rains had washed away the roads. And of those 60 percent, another 30 percent of that 60 percent had less than one day of stock. So they had reached critical levels because of the inadequacy of the infrastructure. And the third blocker to coal is quality. The quality of coal in India is poor, it has extremely high ash and sulfur content. For these three reasons, coal has had difficulty in actually meeting its production targets and indeed realizing perhaps the potential that the policymakers have set out for it. Oil is not available in abundance in India. We have 29 years of reserves to production ratio, but the bulk of these oil reserves are in areas that are geologically and topographically very complex. There is no easy oil left in India. It has been difficult to locate the oil, but it has been even more difficult to extract the oil on a commercial and sustainable basis. Now, that doesn't mean that we haven't had some successes. The private sector reliance company discovered the largest gas field in the world in the year that they discovered it. And it has a production potential of half a million barrels of oil equivalent today. There have been other fairly, there have been other smaller fines, but they've all held out the expectation that India in fact has a large amount of reserves that have yet to be located. The problem as I've just indicated is that these reserves are in very difficult terrain and it is not easy to access them. We are hopeful about alternatives, but that is a long-term solution. Nuclear is very high on the agenda, but following Fukushima, there is local resistance. Only last week, a group of very senior ex bureaucrats, headed by us, a cabinet secretary filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking for a stay on all new nuclear generating plants. They also asked for a complete review of the safety conditions. The Supreme Court has to look at this particular state, I mean has to look at this particular petition. We are currently producing 8 gigawatts of wind power and we have again on paper huge expectations from wind, but here the problem lies with the site. It is never easy to actually locate a windmill because of the need for land and land rights are difficult to define in India. They have not been properly defined, the title is never easily identified and therefore it is not easy from a practical standpoint to actually expand or to scale up wind. Solar is the highest item on the Prime Minister's agenda. Solar mission is something I think I suspect all of you are aware of. The government of India has given this great priority, but once again there are commercial, technical and financial reasons why solar is like unlikely to make a major impact on our energy basket in the near future. Bio, there is a lot of talk about bio, but every time a policy paper is written it raises the issue of how do we reconcile the conflict between food and fuel. The point I guess that I just wanted to highlight is that once we have a broad base of energy resources we are not able to extract the full potential from these resources and supply is therefore struggling to keep pace with this demand. The third hard truth is that technology has been relatively underutilized or maybe inefficiently utilized. The recovery rate of oil and gas from our producing fields in India right now is 28 percent. This should be compared to an average recovery rate from fields of similar geology of around 40 percent. Our coal power plants have a conversion factor of 30 percent whereas the average around the world is 37 percent. We have not actually managed to use technology that is available off the shelf in an efficient manner. We need to do that. The fourth hard truth is the absence of an institutional structure that allows for an integrated energy policy. I mentioned to you that we have seven, eight different ministries that are currently involved with energy. The consequence of that is the absence of one holistic framework within which an integrated energy policy can be framed. The final hard truth is that the environment is under stress. The link between economic growth, energy demand and the environment is too strong, is unhealthily strong. We have not done enough to weaken this link. The fact is that our economy is almost totally reliant on fossil fuels. The fact is that gas which is a relatively benign fossil fuel has not yet achieved its position in the energy basket because of the absence of adequate distribution and logistic infrastructure. The fact is that 400 million to 450 million people are currently using firewood and dung to meet their requirements. They are denuding forests. The Indo-Arya pollution as a consequence of dung has led to respiratory illness which is apparently, according to the WHO, made that one of the principal causes for early death, premature death in India. For all these reasons, the environment is currently under great stress. Now it's important that I've listed these five facts, five hard truths because I just want to make two points. One is that these are very hard hard truths. Second is that we cannot even begin to address our energy security issues if we do not tackle these hard truths together. We cannot tackle these hard truths sequentially. We have to tackle them together. But in order for us to tackle these hard truths together, we have to recognize the issues, the constraints, the limitations within which the energy sector currently functions. And I wanted to just highlight four or five of those issues. You might say a slight digression from the specifics of energy, but they have a direct bearing on how energy policies are framed. The first is the conflict today in our society, in our country, between the society and the state. Our society is vibrant, dynamic, the people are demanding, they're questioning traditional concepts, they're upending traditional hierarchies, they're entrepreneurial, they're clashing with a state that is still hesitant and suspicious of change. They're clashing with a state that has certainly shed its leftist rhetoric, but maybe they have not shed their leftist impulses. This is a state that still wants to hold on to the energy sector. It has not unshackled the energy sector. It has not necessarily allowed the private sector and the government to operate on a level playing field. There's the clash between, you could argue, good economics and good politics. Good economics with demand would suggest that we must reduce subsidies. Good economics would suggest that we must use pricing as a countervailing factor to control demand, that we must encourage real competition. Popular politics, good politics, however, fears the consequences of the market. This clash between politics, good politics and good economics is a major factor in the decision making process regarding energy. There's a clash between centralization and federalization of federalism. India, as you know, is a federal polity. Energy is a central subject. It's a subject that's handled out of Delhi. But Delhi cannot implement its energy policy without the support of the state governments. It cannot implement its policy unless they have the support of governments that give them access to land. It cannot implement policies if the political party in Delhi is at loggerheads with the political party running the states. This dynamic between the center and the state is another factor that we need to keep in mind when we discuss the policy issues related to energy. And finally, there is the whole dynamic between globalization and self-reliance. I already mentioned to you that we are connected, that's a cliche, but our oil sector is today aggressively looking for assets overseas. They already have a presence in 15 different countries. They are in partnership with a number of international players. They are looking aggressively to benefit from our connected and global world, but at the same time, the logic for going overseas is always written in a language that highlights national security, energy security. And sometimes this dynamic between the imperative of globalization and the imperative of nationalism can actually lead to energy policy falling between the cracks. Now I think that this is the backdrop against the next question and perhaps the final question that I wanted to address, what should our energy strategy then look like? Well, the premise of energy strategy in India has to flow from the hard truth that I mentioned. The fact is that fossil fuels will be the dominant fuel in India for the coming decades. Our energy infrastructure is based on fossil fuels. The fact is that we must do something to weaken the link between the economy, economic growth, energy demand in the environment. We have to also look at energy security against the short-term compulsions of ensuring that we don't suffer from technical and market disruptions and the long-term requirement to ensure access to reliable and secure supplies. And we have to also premise our strategy on somehow moving our economy from fossil fuels towards the alternatives. Those are the four premises on which our national strategy on energy should be based. And indeed, the four premises on which the government is currently looking to develop their national strategy. What are the elements of this national strategy? What should be the elements of this national strategy? Well, first, there's no doubt that we have to do more to harness our indigenous hydrocarbon fuels, our hydrocarbon resources. We have to not only bring technology that will improve our recovery rate from 28 to 40 or 45, but we must establish partnerships that will enable us to access the oil and gas and the new unconventionals like shale oil and shale gas that are certainly available in India but are difficult to locate and then develop commercially. We cannot, I don't think, manage that on our own. We should be looking to liberalize our coal mines so that the private sector has access to our coal mines. And we must certainly do more to ensure that the fiscal terms are competitive, that are predictable, and that there's no doubt in anyone's mind, whether the private sector, public sector, international or domestic, that contract terms will be respected. We do not have any, that we will not expose, alter the terms that have been agreed ex ante. The second element of our strategy has to focus on natural gas. Natural gas is the bridge fuel, if you will, between our present position and our hope for future situation when renewables become a more dominant part of the energy basket. The reason why natural gas has not been, has not acquired a more dominant position is because of the absence of pipelines and also because we have not invested perhaps enough in the LNG import terminals. Now both those facts are known to the government, both those facts are being considered aggressively by the government. So they are going, they are plans to put up five more LNG terminals, gasification terminals on the west coast, they are plans to look at two LNG gas terminals on the east coast. A whole blueprint of, has been drawn up for establishing a network that links gas, that links the southern gas, southern markets to gas supplies. Today the two pipelines that currently, the two gas pipelines are both, they cover the north and the west of India, but they do not actually go to the south. Gas is not available in the south of India. We have to do much more to increase, to accelerate investment of infrastructure, to link the southern markets to the gas production system. The third very important policy initiative, which has found expression in the planning commission's report that's just being published, is to rationalize fuel prices. We just simply cannot afford to continue to subsidize petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG. It is a burden on the exchequer, it makes a mockery in fact of all our expectations and hope and plans to control our fiscal deficit. But more than that, it is pushing the public sector companies to the edge of chapter 11. It is also skewing the playing field between the public sector companies and the private companies and as a consequence the investment environment itself is, has been somewhat undermined. There is an important reason for us now to elevate the role of oil diplomacy. The bulk of our oil supplies come from the Middle East and they come from Nigeria and we will be reliant on those countries for years to come. We therefore have to see what can we do to better establish the relationship between the Middle East countries and India. We have oil production, we have the market. Perhaps there is scope here for upstream downstream linkages. But in effect the idea of elevating the role of oil diplomats, energy diplomats within our policy framework is something that needs to find a stronger traction. Demand conservation is a low hanging fruit. It has not yet acquired the importance that it should have acquired. As I mentioned, there is no way we can meet our energy security aspirations if we focus only on the levers of supply. We have to also introduce demand into the equation. Modern conservation and energy efficiency has therefore got to be a very pivotal part of our energy strategy. I mentioned to you that R&D expenditure is amongst the lowest in the industry. That has to change, that must change. The technical resource base in India is phenomenal. In Shell, for instance, has a technical center in India. It's the only center of its kind east of Suez. The time that we set up the center, we established a bar for shortlisting candidates. The bar had to be raised three times before we were able to get a number, before we were able to start interviewing an acceptable number of people. There was far too many people who met the threshold that we had set out in the early stages of our development. Today we have 600 technocrats scientists who are at our own laboratory and they are providing support to the group companies around the world. The support is of a level that Shell has decided to essentially look at only three technology centers around the world. One of which will be the one that we have set up in Bangalore. The reason for this example is to essentially highlight the fact that we have the human resource talent, but the industry has not spent enough on extracting the most from this talent. That is something that has to change. We cannot push for an increase in the role of alternative energies unless we also invest heavily in smart infrastructure. We have wind farms in Tamil Nadu that are unable to actually provide electricity because they have not been linked to the consumption centers. The fact is that we have got to start looking at investments across the integrated alternative energy value chain. It's no good just saying we want to develop or commercialize solar or wind or bio. We also have to see what can be done to recalibrate our infrastructure so that these new forms, new sources of energy are able to meet the needs of the customer, but we are also able to scale them up. That is one of the major impediments to developing new sources of energy in India. The development investment in smart infrastructure has to be a key element of strategy. We have to also now look at a much more stronger collaboration with countries like the United States. These collaborations must be in the realm of technology. I have already given you several examples of where technology can actually add value where through the input of appropriate technology we can shift the needle 5, 10, 15 degrees and add considerable value to our existing energy picture. We should not be looking at technology to radically reinvent the energy consumption basket or the energy supply situation. We should look at technology to do better what we are already doing. And finally there is a need for a super ministry that focuses on energy. Today we need to actually ask the question, how does a country develop an energy policy if it is handled through a multiple of decision makers, each of whom have a turf to protect, each of whom have companies to protect and all of whom are looking at the energy picture through their particular silo. This issue I think is perhaps the most important and arguably the most urgent issues facing the energy sector. Were we to create an institutional framework that allows for a more cohesive and integrated energy policy framework, I think we would be able to address many of these hard truths that I have just identified. So I am going to just stop here Ambassador because I think I have overrun but this is I hope given you a sense of the energy profile in India and answer at least some of the questions that you would set out. Thank you. I certainly didn't answer many of the questions that we set out. I think that was a great presentation. The ten facts of the five hard truths and the recommendations for coherent Indian policy for India, energy policy, excellent framework for our discussion. I also was struck by your call for a super ministry to bring together I think you said seven ministries now have a role within India for energy policy. We tried to do that many years ago in this country by creating the energy department and if I am not mistaken maybe some of my CSIS colleagues can correct me, I think there is an event here tomorrow about the creation of the energy department and what that was intended to do to bring all of the various components of our government together and indeed the first energy secretary was James Lessinger who was a senior counselor here at CSIS. So we too have tried that bringing together a coherent institutional structure. Now whether or not that has actually led to a coherent national strategy for energy in the United States is perhaps debatable but we did go through that institutional reorganization so I do wish India will in that respect. Let me do this. I am going to perhaps begin with a question picking up on many of the comments that you made about India's search for alternative sources I think you mentioned aggressively looking beyond India's borders. I would like to ask a question on that sort of the geopolitics here and then I am going to open this up to the audience for questions and comments. When we do that by the way let me mention we have two microphones. This is being recorded in webcast you can see the camera here. So it is being webcast it is being recorded for putting out immediately and for posterity so I would like all of you to wait for the microphone and when you get that microphone if you would state your name and your affiliation and comments are welcome because this is to be a conversation but brief comments and questions are welcome but we love it one at a time as opposed to the multi part. I have a three part question you have heard that before which is really three questions we want to try to get around the room. So let me begin with a reference to what you said about seeking partnerships and the rest. This is actually I have a two part question I just said not to do that. It is a two part question but it is all geopolitical. In the neighborhood in your neighborhood of India and I have had some dealings with this when I was assistant secretary there are energy resources that are available. There is natural gas you have Bangladesh you have Myanmar, Burma, Hydropower and Nepal I would like to get a sense from you about how you think that regionally because all of the neighbors are also in search for energy to fuel their economies. How is India going to approach that regional dimension of the search and then another part of the regional is a very big part which is China and you mentioned that you see India aggressively searching for overseas sources. Well there is another country that will be and is aggressively searching at this point and that is China. How do you view the India-China competition or perhaps cooperation in the search for energy sources because both countries with the growth rate eight, nine percent will have to have more energy to address their needs in the future. If we could start with those questions and then we will go to the audience. Thanks. The regional question. Now this is an issue which has been on the agenda for years in India. I mean it is the partnership between Bhutan and India on Hydropower was a great success and that led to several analysts and commentators and government officials talking about the potential for partnership between India and Nepal. Then there was of course a lot of conversation about whether India should partner Bangladesh and that is the only means by which Bangladesh could monetize its gas and there was the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline and now we have in recent months been sort of focused on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline. Tappi. Tappi. Sorry. Yeah. Tappi. So this is a subject that has been on the agenda but I have to say that it has excited the commentators and the analysts and the think tanks more than the practitioners of policy. The reason is that I think the reason actually my own personal reason is that it flows from indeed the siloed nature of our decision making. The Ministry of Petroleum for instance is pushing for the Tappi pipeline. It was pushing for the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. The Bangladesh issue and the Nepal issue kind of dropped off the agenda because the politics, simple straight forward politics, Bangladesh government was not prepared to sell to India and Nepal didn't really, we didn't really have a dialogue with Nepal on this. But on the Tappi and Iran pipeline the Ministry of Petroleum was pushing hard for this but then you had other ministries who were raising all sorts of issues whether it was the issue of security, whether it's the issue of the geopolitics and before you knew it the within India itself the debate was getting sort of fragmented. Now there are so there are commercial issues which have held it back which are pricing issues that is focused that is the focus of the Ministry of Petroleum but the Ministry of Petroleum things they can over they can overcome it. But the security issues and the geopolitical issues which are raised by either the Ministry of External Affairs or maybe the Ministry of Home Affairs or the Defense Ministry or indeed by the ministries that are involved with the consuming industries that is the Ministry of Fertilizer, Ministry of Power those, those, those initiatives, those demands, those concerns then complicate the whole negotiating process. So these subjects will remain on the agenda but it's going to be some years before we actually we find that we are physically drawing molecules from the region in my view. That's, as far as China is concerned we are in, yeah we are in competition with China. China uses the balance sheet of China Inc. to get what it wants. India uses the balance sheet of its, of the company that is out there fighting for an asset. So there's a, there's a mismatch here and we are not as successful as China and our successes are, are, are there we have not, I shouldn't knock it. We have, as I said, only, I believe only last week we've just purchased a stake in Kashagan for six billion dollars. I don't know whether the report is, is factually correct or not but that is the report that just came out. I just saw it in fact yesterday. But we have, we have assets in Venezuela, in Brazil, in Syria, in Sudan, in Vietnam. And these are, you know, we have paid top dollar for it. But we haven't been able to perhaps acquire the sort of the, the, the assets that we were looking at because in Africa, because China was much more aggressive. We have to, again, put the weight of India ink behind our efforts to secure assets overseas if we wish to compete effectively with other countries. Could I, could I just pursue this for a moment in two respects. One is putting India ink behind. Recently, Manmohan Singh traveled to Africa. The U.S. and India have a, an initiative for African development. When he traveled to Africa, did he have oil diplomacy as part of his talking points? You know, if he did, I don't know about it. Yeah. I don't think he did. I don't think the minister of petroleum was with him. I don't think the secretary of petroleum was with him. There are a number of private companies that have acquired assets, you know, sort of downstream assets in, in East Africa and, but it wasn't, I don't think it was part of his agenda. I may be wrong, by the way. I mean, I haven't really looked into it, but I don't recollect anyone from the minister when talking to me about the Prime Minister's visit to Africa. Because the Chinese have a very targeted approach to Africa. Absolutely. They're actually building, doing things in their, obviously. Yeah. So we can't, you know, that's, that's the whole point. We have, we, we would like, let's say, we went to Nigeria and we wanted to buy their upstream assets in Nigeria. The Nigerians say, well, you know, maybe you need, we will, we'll consider you if you're investing also in a power plant. Right. Chinese are much, they're able to make that commitment. We then have, again, to look at the multiple sort of decision makers, bring them all onto the same page before we can make that commitment. Because there's not one minister who then decides. It'll be four ministers. It'll be the minister for petroleum who wants the upstream asset. It'll be the minister for power who wants the, you know, who's responsible for power. It'll be the ministry of finance who has to then sanction the, the, you know, the funding. And then it'll be the ministry of external affairs because it's an overseas, it's an overseas acquisition. Now I'm not saying these are, I mean, I'm just making the point that, that in some areas and in particular to do with energy. Because energy is the only commodity on which we in India are independent on the outside world. Think of that. We are self-suffering food. All the other problems that we face are problems that are domestically sort of, you know, engineered. But energy is one problem that we can't resolve on our own. We have to have partnerships. We have to be part of the rest of the world if we want to solve our energy problem. So I am a strong advocate of at least taking the energy sector, putting it aside and focusing on energy as a standalone strategic initiative. And looking at an institutional structure that will not only strengthen our position vis-a-vis the rest of the world, but will also make it easier for us to, as I say, approach energy in an integrated, cohesive, coherent manner. Does anyone in India talk about energy independence? We have that term in the United States. I mean, we're all on the same boat here about being dependent on foreign sources. And occasionally here we're going to make America energy independent and people sort of roll their eyes. How are you going to do that? Did anybody talk about energy independence in India? They talk about it. It is an aspiration that the politicians will have in their speeches. But it is very clear that we don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. All roads and many respects lead back to the Middle East when you talked about oil diplomacy and you talked about the Middle East and India. Could you flesh this out a little bit? You've had experience with Egypt, deep experience in the region. How would you see this oil diplomacy going? Because right now no one knows the future politics of the region. It's going through the Arab Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. We don't know where it's heading. What's your thoughts? I think when I asked, I would say that we need to sort of focus, in one sense we need to abstract from the politics of the Middle East right now and focus on the resource base of the Middle East and whether or not their resources and their national interests are in some senses in harmony with our requirements and our national interests. So that oil and gas are the two areas where we can have a partnership. One, because they need the market, we have the market. Gas, they need the market, we have that. But they're also looking, I think, to invest in the downstream sector in India. So the way I see it is that if you were to... that there are countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, maybe Abu Dhabi where you could perhaps establish a relationship that brings the synergy or that established the synergy between their interest in creating a market position in India and our interest in establishing long-term supply arrangements with them. The politics is something that in the short term will make it difficult to sort of perhaps achieve any traction on these issues. But I think this particular subject is going to be on the agenda irrespective of how the politics sort of evolves. Okay, so let's begin. We'll just sort of work from the front here and sort of try to move around with the mic in close proximity. We'll make it all the way around the room. If you could, again, introduce yourself and affiliation and... My name is Som Karamchatti. In 2008 I used to follow your writings in the Indian Express and I was probably the only one that wrote a comment a couple of times. At least to introduce myself to you in particular. You were actually mentioning at the time in terms of needing an energy czar. You in fact named a particular politician in India. But the general comment I had at the time I repeated again in terms of perhaps your analysis is great, I've admired it before, but you have been looking through the glasses of an oil executive. And that's why you find that when we talk about oil, even today the discussion has been mostly on the oil and oil resources abroad and oil requirements in India, fossil fuel and so on. You dismiss the call also very quickly. Solar and all that, you were shielded completely from the sun. So I want to bring you back into that discussion. In that sense my view is that in India it's a problem of allocation. Allocation of leadership resources which you mentioned and allocation of land which you partly mentioned but didn't go into detail. Allocation of technology, allocation of planning, allocation of capital. Even when we talk about US versus India it's a matter of allocation of the politics of that. The US politics and the Indian politics are different. So I would request you to think in terms of allocation and we are not allocating rightly. For example you mentioned about 200 people, 200 professionals in a shell, whatever. The number should be probably 200,000 or 20,000 or some number like that because it's technically very strong. I believe that it's an allocation problem. Very briefly, I mean I have no dispute with you. I focus on oil and gas in any talk on energy because ultimately, it's not just because I know a lot more about oil and gas than others, it's also because it is the fact. I mean not just oil and gas, oil and gas and coal, it's a fact. Only 3% of our energy is currently drawn from fossil fuels. Our entire energy infrastructure is based on fossil fuels. We can talk about solar and bio and as it did wind and others but we must recognize that from now until 2030-2035 we will be dependent on fossil fuels. What I try to do today was to try and give you a sense of the problems associated with making this transition from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels. I think you're absolutely right. The transition can be accelerated if we allocate more funds to non-fossil fuels. Our R&D expenditure of $1 billion over 5 years is just an indication of how limited our efforts are. The rhetoric speaks much louder than the action in this particular case but there are other factors that we need to look at. We have to invest in smart infrastructure. You talk about land. The population density in India is 350 people per square kilometer of land. This means that in order to put up a power plant that requires 5,000 hectares you will need to displace 20,000 people, displace and rehabilitate 20,000 people. I'm just giving you the statistic because it gives you an idea of how difficult it is to acquire land. It's not just a question of the title. The title in itself is always questionable. There are people who have always some problem with the title but even if the title was clear, even if the government owned the land it is not easy to actually get the land, move the people, rehabilitate the people. We can talk about wind farms. We can talk about shale, for example. But any subject that requires large tracts of land is going to face the political economy of land acquisition. And I'm afraid I am a practical guy. I am saying green the fossil fuels as fast as you make the shift towards non-fossil fuels. So look for technology, allocate money for coal gasification, allocate money for gas to liquids and also allocate money to building up a solar and wind and bio-infrastructure. I have no doubt about that. But I would like the energy policy, opinion formers and policy framers to also try and pick the low-hanging fruits of oil and gas and coal. There are huge avoidable costs in our economy. We don't need to incur those costs. So the recovery rate of oil and gas in India of 28% could go up to 40%. Can you just imagine what that does to our production figures? Why? It's not as if we need proprietary technology here. We need off-the-shelf technology. So that's all I'm trying to say. Allocation is key. I agree with you. But I'm looking at the whole sector of energy in a temporal sort of frame saying today the current priority is enhance indigenous production, green fossil fuels, weaken the link between demand and the environment and at the same time allocate more money towards this transition. Isn't there a land acquisition bill going through the parliament now? Yeah, no, no. But I'm just thinking a piece of this will come down to that kind of legislation within the Indian Parliament to provide greater opportunities for infrastructure, for energy and the rest. Absolutely. The land acquisition bill has been, in a way, driven by the complexities surrounding land acquisition. But it's not as if the bill has been passed. It's not. We have more in the U.S. Congress these days. We have questions at the front table here and then we're going to go to the second table. So let me begin with my colleague, Amir Latif, who is also a fellow at the Wadwani chair. Sir, I'm Amir Latif, visiting fellow. Thank you for a wonderful presentation. You very particularly laid out the challenges that India is facing in its energy future. Could you give us a sense of what you think is going right in India with energy policy? Where are the areas of optimism that you see or what's going correctly? I think energy is now very much on everyone's agenda. That's good. That's a positive. The dialogue, the debate is one that involves the private sector and consultants and think tanks. That's positive. On the upstream side, the private sector companies are now actively solicited. So there is no doubt I think in anyone's mind that risk capital is an essential prerequisite for successful exploration. We don't have, I mean the government doesn't have the capital, they need to attract it from outside and they're aggressively soliciting that. There is also clear recognition of the importance of gas. And as I said in my talk, when I say we, I mean the government in one sense, not me, but the government is encouraging the development of regasification terminals and also they have this pipeline network. So there is debate on whether or not to privatize coal mines so all that. I think the final thing that's going right is that we are much more open. It's kind of an abstract statement but I am encouraged by the receptivity to new ideas. I'm not saying that we are coming up with new ideas that there's a whole bunch of new ideas that are on the table but one of the positives of let's say even a dialogue like this is that if there was somebody who had a good idea, the government of India and the Prime Minister's office and the Planning Commission would be very well committed and that's important. Money is not there right now. We haven't allocated enough funds, we haven't changed the way that the oil companies or the public sector companies are operating. The bureaucracy is still very much, you know, still in some sense is shackling the autonomy of the management so those are issues that are not good but the positives are, those are the positives. Encouraging. Also at this front table. Peter Gerritsen, so you represent a very interesting slice of sort of the Indian political economy being in sort of the executive public oil and gas sector so I wanted to ask specifically on how sort of your segment of the Indian political economy views the intersection with energy security and competition specifically in China and there are sort of three general ways in which I'm interested. One is I've read at various times that Arunachal Pradesh has significant shale and hydrocarbon resources and that's an area of tension. Then there's the whole South China Sea and the potential exploration with Vietnam and other states and then of course there's the question over reports such as Guadar or whether or not that could impede flow so within your sort of sector what is the dialogue there, what sort of naval policies or security military policies are sort of favored within your community and how do you look at how India ought to be posturing itself with respect to particularly its navy in these areas? Yeah, this question, these set of questions are not actually part of the remit of the energy ministry. They are the remit of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of External Affairs. It does not mean that I'm not trying to suggest that the energy ministry doesn't get involved or doesn't actually face the consequences of these tensions. They do. So in Arunachal Pradesh the problems that you are referring to may impede exploration. They may delay the gathering of necessary data. They may indeed actually deter investors, downstream investors so that even if you were to find gas you won't be able to monetize it because of lack of a market. Arunachal Pradesh doesn't have a market of its own. That's how South China sees it. There was an article in the China Daily last week, People's Daily, one of the papers in which it was an editorial piece where they slammed India for partnering Vietnam in the South China Seas. It was a very aggressive language. So ONGC will certainly suffer the consequences of any political fallout from whatever the Chinese are looking at doing in the South China Seas. But the specifics of does the Ministry of Petroleum or do people like me actually get asked questions on the strategic aspects of our relationship with China and how they, you know, that does not happen. It's really something that is actually handled by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of External Affairs. So how do I see it? I mean, clearly I think that we should be asked. I think the economics of monetizing these resources should play a part in the development of the policies that we have towards on these issues. And maybe that's another reason for a coordinated or an institutional framework. I'm not answering your question directly because I don't also have the specific answers, but I'm just trying to tell you, it's not part of our image. Energy security. Next table, Ray Vickery. Ray Vickery from Alt-Right Stone Ridge. You spoke about collaboration between the United States and India on energy matters. And I'd like you to explore that a little bit further. It's a common concept or goal put out, but it seems to me that if you look at the collaboration that actually goes on, it's very little. Most of it boils down to technology collaboration, and it seems to me it's sort of the basis of, well, you, United States, and us, India, technology, and thank you very much, and that ought to be it. If you look at what's happened in civil nuclear, for example, it's completely dead in the water in terms of actual collaboration because of the questions of liability. So what does it mean to say, yes, there's scope for collaboration and there's really some way forward that makes sense to both countries? That's a good question. I mean, I agree with you. There's a lot more talk about collaboration than the substance of collaboration. I think that the short answer would be don't knock technology collaboration. There is indeed a lot more that we could be doing in the area of technology collaboration. By the way, when I talk about collaboration, I'm not talking about the private sector and private sector. The private sector investments are separate. They will decide what they want to do. I'm talking about how governments can get together to essentially facilitate, enable the development of our energy strategy. And I think technology collaboration has to be a very important part of that relationship. So when we talk about technology, there are five specific areas that clearly offer scope. And those are the alternatives, solar, wind, bio, shale, nuclear. I agree with nuclear that there's a problem right now, but hopefully that gets solved. I think that you go one step beyond just collaboration. You actually look at setting up a center in India that does high-end technology research on these issues. I talked about the human resource base that we have here. Is there a possibility for the US government and the Indian government to actually contemplate setting up an advanced energy institute for researching the technologies related to these new sources of energy? I think that's one concrete step that could be taken. I think a second possibility is that when we talk about shale, for instance, in India, it's clearly that we're going to draw on the experience and the expertise that's in the West. I mean, that's in America. And I know that the US Geological Survey is helping India on this issue right now. But my own sense is that we should use that relationship to see whether or not the US, whether we in India can develop a set of terms, licensing terms and operating conditions regarding shale that draws on the expertise of the US, that draws on the consultancies that the US might provide, but which accelerates the development of shale in a practical way. What worries me is that we may just leave the relationship between US and India on shale or we may limit it just to the gathering of data. I think we should think about how we can take it one step further and move from data to something that will lead to the development of a licensing framework which will then lead to investment dollars for the exploration of shale. So I think those two areas are specifics. We have a handout outside on a fact sheet on US and India partnership to advance clean energy, energy security and climate change. Let's go toward, let's write, we'll go these two right here, if please, yes. Louvian Meyers, Golden Global Strategies. I have a question actually on shale gas and I was just sort of wondering if you could elaborate on what the government of India is doing right now to, you know, what specifically they're doing right now to develop the shale gas resources there, whether it be tax laws or you talked about the land rights, the bill that's in the government right now. So if you could just talk about specifics, that'd be great. Well, the specifics are not as clear as they should be. The reason is that the government is still actually debating the specifics. They've accepted that shale has huge potential. They have identified the areas where they believe the reserves are available. They've identified the issues that need to be resolved and amongst those issues the most important are land, water. They have also talked about the environment because it's been on the agenda elsewhere. They've focused on ONGC as the pivotal sort of agency and asked ONGC to identify consultants as well as potential partners. But what they have not done, and that's where the specifics are lacking, is they haven't actually set out the licensing framework. They haven't defined the fiscal terms and they haven't also demarcated the blocks, the areas. So my response to the earlier question was that, look, this is what needs to be done. When we talk about partnership with the U.S., why don't we also focus on trying to put flesh out the ideas that are currently doing the rounds with regard to shale? So there are no specifics right now. The intent is to try and accelerate it. The shale a silver bullet for the energy prices? No. I don't think so. This is not a shale view. This is not my personal view. I don't think shale is a bullet. It's not a silver bullet. Because I don't have any ideas to the reserves. There may be huge reserves there. But I'm concerned about issues I just raised. Land, water. How quickly can we actually solve the issues related to land and will we indeed be able to acquire the water rights that are essential for developing shale? This question, two questions right here at the front table. While the microphone is getting there, I did see, do everyone here know where the term silver bullet came from? Does anybody know that that came from the Lone Ranger in Tonto? I saw a cartoon recently with Tonto looking to Lone Ranger and he said, Kim Wasabi, we've really oversold this whole idea of a silver bullet. And I think in the energy field, there probably isn't a silver bullet out there. Thanks. My name is Jeff Meyer with IHS, Cambridge Energy Research Associates. I just wanted to follow up on a point you made about demand conservation and wanted to know what you think or what you consider the key oil conservation measures that are in place now and what you think the key measures will likely be over the next 20 years. Thanks. The key measures right now that are in place and that need to be rigorously perhaps implemented are the standards relating to energy use in residential buildings and in the industrial sites, the cement and steel. The key measures that need to be implemented and well need to be tightened are the measures relating to vehicle emissions. We haven't actually done enough on that and my concern is that the challenge for the environment is actually going to come from air pollution from vehicles. So that's sort of one part of the answer. The other is that the Energy Conservation Bureau which is responsible for these measures is not provided in my personal view. It's not provided the kind of profile and the resources required to execute this extremely important component of energy strategy. They need to be given a much higher profile and more resources and they need to actually have access to direct access to the prime ministers and the key ministers. They don't have it. They get kind of caught within the bureaucracies of the ministries in which they handle or in which they function. That's another problem. The final is that the various government entities have all sorts of officers looking at issues like vigilance and are they operating to the right? Are they procuring material based on accepted procedures and so on? There are not enough people out there who are actually following the... who are not ensuring that these standards are implemented correctly. We need to actually have people in the various companies who are overseeing the implementation of these emission standards and performance standards. Is there equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency? Yeah, there is. But there are several bodies that have responsibility for something that the Environmental Protection Agency oversees. Some sit in the Ministry of Environment, some sit in the Ministry of Petroleum, some sit in the Ministry of Path. So these regulatory bodies are also fragmented and they're underfunded and they're bureaucratic and the reason that the point I'm making is that you need to actually pull them out of the bureaucracy, let them operate autonomously and also let them have a direct line to the oil companies or the power companies or all the other companies that operate in this area. Is there also the element of corruption we hear a great deal about corruption these days? India is confronting this. Does corruption also play into the administration oversight of the energy world and regulations and the rest? Is that a concern? No, corruption... you hear a lot more about corruption than in fact perhaps is the reality. There's no doubt, I don't want to push the issue of corruption under the surface, under the carpet, but one very positive and maybe that's the answer that I should have given to the questions, one very positive development over the years is the fact that the procedures have become more transparent and none of these bodies that I've just talked about actually confront a corrupt interlocutor there's none of that. The problem is that they don't have the power to execute their own decisions, their own policies. That's more important. It's not that there's any corruption. Yes, sir. Again, the front table, then we're going to go here and then toward the back. Vikram, thank you very much for your always incisive remarks. I wanted to turn back to the conflict between the central government and the states because as you well know, if not all the state electricity boards are in desperate financial condition and I'm wondering how do we get India to advance with the tremendous electricity needs they have looking towards the future and get them over this hump that currently nobody in their right mind would probably want to invest in one of these entities. Yeah, I'm struggling with an answer, Charles, because I don't want to give the cliched answer in that the solutions are known to everyone. We know we need to do a lot more. We need to privatize distribution. We need to privatize transmission. We've already privatized some extent. I mean, generation. We need to have a much clearer set of regulatory rules. The whole pricing tariff structure has to be re-hauled or overhauled. It doesn't work like that. That's unfortunately the case. The fact of the matter is that the politics, the political economy of power just prevents us from making these changes. Now, so that's the downside. What I just want to say in answering your question is that look, there is huge financial pressures on the Central Exchequer and the State Exchequer. The governments are no longer able to fund these losses. These losses are not just the losses that are incurred through subsidies, the losses that incurred through waste, through transmission and distribution theft. These losses are now hitting the bottom line of the government exchequer. Their companies are actually facing bankruptcy. And the balance sheet of the state government and the central government that we see is very different from the liabilities and very different from the balance sheet that actually they face. There are huge contingent liabilities that are not recorded. One day someone's going to have to pay for it and they're now beginning to recognize that the day is coming. So the pressure to rationalize prices, the pressure to rationalize the regulatory regime, the pressure to make sure that the subsidies that are being currently provided are reduced, the UID scheme, the unique identification scheme, these are all sort of initiatives, the pressures and then on top of that the scheme, the effort is all towards somehow or the other reducing this burden, the financial burden on the exchequer. The energy sector happens to be the biggest drain on the finances. So the positive of the crisis that we are facing today is that there's going to be a shift towards rationalization. We had two questions over here. If we could, we're approaching 10.30 and I want to keep us on schedule. All of you have things that you will be needing to do. Could we just take each of these questions here from the, there are three questions right here. If you could just ask your questions and then we could... Matthew Sada, I'm a Foreign Service Officer. I spent the last couple of years in Calcutta reporting on politics and also on energy. I want to thank you again for your overview. The policy prescriptions that you've listed are really good ones. The fifth one, the super ministry. I think that is maybe the most elegant of all the solutions in that it takes five, six ministers that you would have to deal with and then puts it down to one. However, again, I think politics is actually the most difficult problem here and I'd like to hear from you on the political appetite by politicians for these changes. Because as you know, coal, gas, these ministries have a lot of patronage power. What will it take to get politicians to buy into something like this? Because again, the policy prescriptions are, I think, easier actually. Whereas the political challenges, again, drawing on the state, center, divide, again, regional parties, etc., how do you navigate that? Second question here. You mentioned it very briefly with the first question regarding advanced fossil energy. Can you discuss a little bit more about the appetite for those type of solutions? I seen gas, coal to liquid. Given the abundance of low-grade coal, some of the challenges with land and water within the region and also surging demand and subsequently price for LNG within the region. And the final question. We actually have two final questions in the very back. Deepa Olappli from George Washington University. You spoke a lot about the governmental aspects, and I wanted to shift it slightly to the private sector in India, the big industries, because after all, they're going to be the ones that are the major consumers of energy in the coming years. And I wondered to what extent they have an input in the government's foreign or domestic energy policies. Is there an industry voice that you could identify? Are there different preferences for whether it be domestic strategies or international, particular pipelines, competition with China? I mean, is there an industry stand on this? And finally, the last question. Albert Nahas from Shenier Energy. We just mentioned LNG and prices in the region. With substantial Indian investments in the shale gas, boom, here in the United States, do you think that will facilitate transfer of technology to India? And do you think that the companies investing here in exploration are going to be shipping back fairly cheap U.S. gas to India bypassing the regional price mechanism for gas and oil, which is oil-based? Let me go in reverse order. Remind me if I haven't actually answered all the questions. I think the companies that have invested in the U.S. are unlikely to actually look at transferring technology on their own. They may become a partner in the process of transfer, but I'm not sure that that's the raison d'etre for their investments here. There's certainly a number of private companies in India who are looking at the U.S. as a potential source for gas. These are companies that have set up a power plant to not actually secure an allocation of gas from the government of India. They are in discussion, but how serious is their discussion? I don't know, seriously discussion, but they're certainly in discussion of one or two companies in the U.S. I think it will be some time before molecules from the U.S. actually come to India, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. The private sector is a major contributor to policy in India. One of the big changes that I think has taken place over the last two decades is that the private sector is no longer just a supplicant. They don't just sit in front of government offices waiting to ask for favors here. They are now actually part and parcel of the decision-making process. There are a number of bodies that involve the private sector. So they do play a role. There are also, of course, industry bodies that are increasingly influential. The confederation of Indian industries, Vicky, these are. Then there are individuals who are very powerful in the Indian context. Many of these individuals run large energy companies. So if you have these three layers, you might say of involvement of the private sector, there are these formal committees that are public and private, that have membership from the public and the private sector, they have the industry federation, and then you have the individual. But I think the basic point I would make is that the government is now more receptive to input from the private sector, especially on energy. I mean, I was a member of what was called the R Group many years ago, and that group was chaired by the minister and R stood for reforms, and it actually formulated the policy that led to the deregulation of the industry. That's all I have to say, and that policy, the NOS cabinet was chaired by the cabinet, was set up as a government policy, and so on and so forth. But the point is, of course, subsequently many elements of that particular decision got re-regulated. But that's not the answer to your question. The answer to your question is yes, the private sector is very much involved. There is a lot of appetite for technology, whether it's coal gasification, gas to liquids. If you were to talk to Gas Authority of India or coal India, you would find huge receptivity. You would find that people want to learn more. There's a big gap between that statement of interest, and the translation into action. And again, I go back to this fundamental point, I think I've made it so often. The reason for this gap is that these entities have to deal with a whole bunch of other entities before they can pull together and convert a policy statement into an actionable item. So if you wanted to, say, introduce coal gasification technology, you would need to talk to the Ministry of Power, there's gas, you need to talk to the Ministry of Petroleum, there's gas, you need to talk to the Ministry of Power, because if it's a power plant, you need to talk to the Ministry of Coal because you need access to coal mines. You need to talk to the State Governments because those coal mines are in the State Governments, you know, part of the State movement. By the time you've gone through this circle, the whole idea is lost. So this is once again the problem. I mean, the real positive is that we have an open, transparent, and very receptive environment. And today, energy is on the agenda, people are looking for solutions. The challenge is the institutional framework, the political and decision-making framework. And the last is the appetite for, that is your question now, I didn't manage to write it down properly, so just for the co-exactly, absolutely. So now, a good question and difficult to answer. I mean, I don't know the answer, frankly. I would say that it would be impossible to seek an institutional change of the kind that I'm asking. If by what I'm asking is, collapse all the current ministries into one ministry, I am not asking that. I mean, if that was the case, it's not possible. What I'm really looking at is, create something else. Let all of these institutions maybe exist, but the prime minister needs to exercise his authority to really pull together the energy policy under one umbrella. Now, it's politically infeasible for you to get rid of the ministry of petroleum, coal, power. It's not just possible there. But it is not politically infeasible to identify a set of issues which are focused on energy security or maybe new energy sources, perhaps oil diplomacy. One or two specific issues which we feel are of paramount importance in meeting our energy security requirement and putting that under the executive authority of a super ministry. Today, if you put it under the authority of the Planning Commission, which is run by an extremely competent person, there will be huge traction, but he has no executive authority. He can't implement it. He has to go back to the ministries that I just referred to for implementation. So I am saying to myself, we've come to a very critical crossroad as far as energy is concerned. We can't allow things to drift. We can't allow the institutional sort of framework to delay decision making. So let's pull out from maybe the 10 or 12 items that I identified as strategies, pull out those which are paramount important, and let's implement that through a super ministry. Excellent. Well, let me present. We want to thank Mr. Mehta. We have a token of appreciation for him. Actually, it's a thematic token of appreciation. I think that you already know the author of this book, Daniel Juergen. Oh, yeah. This is the quest, energy, security, and the remaking of the modern world. I thought there could be nothing more appropriate to give Mr. Mehta for this because we are all jointly on this quest. And so much of what you've talked about are chapter headings in Daniel Juergen's new book. Let me present this to you and let's all express our appreciation. Thank you very much.