Rajiv Gandhi Petroleum Technology Institute needs campus: Pradhan

With the fall of global crude oil prices by the day putting the focus on energy, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday took on the onus of completing construction of a campus for the nation's premier institute of petroleum technology.

"Let us take a pledge that we will make the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology a world class institution," Pradhan said at the first convocation of the Rae Bareli-based RGIPT that organised the ceremony here in the premises of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

"Whatever administrative responsibility we need to take in the matter, we will take," the minister said in an unusual display of decision making together with stakeholders.

The RGIPT, set up in 2008 by an act of parliament, offers B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in petroleum and chemical engineering, MBA in petroleum and energy management as well as doctoral programmes.

It is co-sponsored as "an energy domain specific" institute by state-run oil and gas giants ONGC, Indian Oil, Oil India, GAIL, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.

"I also take up the responsibility for setting up the RGIPT's supplementary academic centres planned in Sivasagar in Assam and in Karnataka's Bengaluru," the minister said, adding the plans had been approved by the previous UPA government.

Citing the recent examples of Indians making it to the top of American corporations, Pradhan said the RGIPT needed a suitable "ecosystem" for its development.

"Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Indra Nooyi (Pepsico) demonstrate India's knowledge power. You people have to have an ecosystem," Pradhan said in his convocation address.

"Our Jaspreet here should also go on to become CEO of Shell in another 15 years," he said of gold medal-winner Jaspreet Singh Chawla, who is from Pradhan's state Odisha and currently employed with US oil major Shell in their India office.