Alka Mittal is the first woman ever to head India’s largest crude oil and gas producer, the ₹1.10 lakh crore Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The director of human resources at ONGC since 2018, Mittal took additional charge as the company’s CMD in January 2022, succeeding Subhash Kumar, director, finance, who also served as interim CMD. Mittal is also ONGC’s first full-time woman director.
In FY22, soon after she took charge, ONGC posted profit after tax of ₹40,306 crore. The company recently discovered new oil and gas resources — Ratna & R-Series PML area in Mumbai offshore basin and Gopavaram Deep-1 in Krishna Godavari onland E&P efforts. It commercialised another basin in March — the Vindhyan Basin in Rajasthan.
Mittal says ONGC is planning to increase capex in the next few years to monetise new discoveries. “A major part of this will be on exploration with acquisition of new acreages and use of latest technology in seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation and on development and infrastructure projects.” — P.B. Jayakumar