Union Government confirmed the appointment of Talukdar as head of DGH

Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas confirmed the appointment of B.N.Talukdar as the head of Director General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) on 5 February 2014.

B.N.Talukdar will take charge as the new Director General of the DGH on 6 February 2014. He is currently serving as the Director for exploration in Oil India Ltd. (OIL). He will succeed Rajiv Narayan Choubey who was appointed by the former Union Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy as the DG of DGH in June 2012. Choubey is a 1981 batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre.

The confirmation of Talukdar as the head of the DGH came six months after his name was suggested by a government appointed search panel in August 2013. The search panel was headed by the Petroleum Secretary Vivek Rae.

Talukdar has over 37 years experience in the petroleum industry. He is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, USA and functioned as the President of the Delhi Chapter of SPE. He is also closely associated with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and Society of Petroleum Geophysicists. The appointment of Talukdar is significant in the sense that for the first time in the history of DGH a technocrat has been appointed as the head of the DGH. This signals an end to the tradition of handpicking a bureaucrat to head the DGH and is expected to bring in more transparency in the appointment of top government posts.

About DGH

The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) was established in 1993 under the administrative control of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas through Government of India Resolution. Objectives of DGH are to promote sound management of the oil and natural gas resources having a balanced regard for environment, safety, technological and economic aspects of the petroleum activity.