Oil exploration in Sri Lanka & our participation …….

We are now a lucky nation because we have oil resources in off shore region of Mannar. Oil explorations will commence after calling tender for that purpose. Government tries to get maximum bid by inviting more participants. LIOC (Lanka Indian Oil Corporation) is one company who is seeking to participate in oil exploration. The Oil and Natural Gas Company (pvt) Ltd, India (ONGC) was selected to oil exploration in a block. I think they also come to new tender calling.

Finding oil in Sri Lanka is very important because depending on other countries for oil is big risk. Because there are rapid fluctuations in oil prices, which affects our economy very badly. We depend highly on Iran (70 %). But this is very risky because if America attacks Iran as like Iraq, we are the losers. We lose our 70 % of oil resource.

So finding our own resources will be an advantage for our economy. But government tries to depend on foreign technology for oil exploration. I agree with that because we do not have proper knowledge on this technology. But government must take this opportunity to train our engineers & scientists on this technology. Otherwise we have to depend on other nations forever. Our country has depended on other nation’s technology for many centuries after 1505. We must acquire our share in modern technology and we must play our role in state-of-art business world. Otherwise we are the losers & others will be obtained more profits from our resources.

Higher Education Ministry spend considerable amount of their allocated funds on department of earth resources & department of Chemical & Process Engineering. So foundation for local intellectuals on Oil industry is visible in Sri Lanka. Now government must offer our students & researchers to expose into this oil exploration environment. Then in near future we can carry out explorations with our own companies. So the whole profit will be ours.