Nagaland oil operations to resume

By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Calcutta

Rebels have been fighting in Nagaland for more than 50 years

India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is to restart operations in the insurgency-hit north-eastern state of Nagaland.

It was forced out of the state more than a decade ago by Naga separatist insurgents and radical youth groups.

The state government has now agreed that the ONGC can start production and exploration in the state.

Nagaland's Chief Minister, Neiphieu Rio, says his government will provide adequate security to the ONGC staff.

'Self-reliant'

"The ONGC should be able to come back and resume operations in Nagaland anytime now," he said.

Nagaland officials say that this is the right time to exploit the area's substantial oil reserves because oil prices are high.

They say the revenues will help make Nagaland a self-reliant state. At present, much of Nagaland's expenditure is supported by subsidies from the central government.

Even the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), which threatened action against the ONGC in 1994 unless it stopped operations, is now relaxed about the corporation's return to the state.

"We will not attack any company or corporation so long as they don't work against the Naga people," an NSCN spokesman told the BBC.

In 1994, the NSCN, easily the strongest separatist group in the north-east, was still fighting. But two years later, it signed a ceasefire agreement with Delhi and started negotiations.

The talks have dragged on without producing any tangible result but the NSCN wants to continue the negotiations to find a durable settlement to the five-decade-old Naga imbroglio.

However, the NSCN is fighting factional rivals, including one of its breakaway group led by Burmese Naga leader SS Khaplang.

Seven rebels of the NSCN and the Khaplang faction have been killed in the last three days in Nagaland all along India's frontier with Burma.

The ONGC estimated in 1994 that Nagaland had reserves of over 600 million tones of petroleum and natural gas.