Brief Profile of Dr. Rabi Narayan Bastia
Added: (Mon Mar 26 2007)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Dr. Rabi Narayan Bastia is a renowned geoscientist who is widely recognized for his outstanding contributions made in the filed of hydrocarbon exploration both at national and international levels.
Born on 2nd October, 1958, he had his early education in the State of Orissa, graduating in sciences from Utkal University. Subsequently he obtained his Masters and Doctoral degree in Geology from IIT, Kharagpur. He was then selected for the specialized MS course in Petroleum Exploration from the Norwegian Technical University, a leading state-of-the-art technical institution. He ranked first amongst the competing international students.
Dr. Bastia has been serving the Indian Petroleum Industry for more than 25 years in different capacities with distinction. He is currently holding Sr. Vice President Position in the Petroleum Business (E&P;) Division of Reliance Industries Limited – India’s industrial giant in the private sector. Prior to this, he had a long and successful tenure with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.
Deep water exploration in India has always been considered a difficult and complicated frontier exploration endeavor in terms of geological complexity, logistics and technology. It posed as a major challenge to the growth of Indian Oil Industry for several years. Dr. Bastia’s contribution in exploring for hydrocarbons in the deep water regions of India is commendable. He has provided a high level of leadership in directing and implementing several major exploration programme in the deepwater regions of the east coast of India which have resulted in major hydrocarbon discoveries. The gas discovery in the Krishna-Godavari basin is the world’s largest find of the year 2002. The discovery in the Mahanadi offshore is another tribute to his foresight, particularly due to the fact that this discovery was preceded by a long spell of unsuccessful exploration by previous operators. Dr. Bastia’s approach in development of new concepts coupled with several technological innovations has added a new dimension to the Indian Hydrocarbons scenario and earned India a place of pride in the deep water map of the world.
With his strong acumen for adopting new technologies, combined with his vibrant and dynamic leadership. Dr. Bastia has effectively guided oil and gas exploration programs at Reliance Industries Ltd to great success. His approach for cost-effective exploration is based on the theme of people-process-technology. His strong conviction in robust workflow, benchmarking with the Industry’s best, stringent peer review and validation by super-specialists have proved to be an integral part of recent success stories of India’s oil and gas exploration.
Dr. Bastia has received numerous awards and distinctions in India and abroad. In the year 2006, he was honored with the coveted Gold Medal at the Association of Exploration Geophysicists Conference. The Government of India conferred The National Mineral Award in the year 2003 in recognition of his scientific dedication and pursuit. During his tenure with ONGC he bagged scientific awards for three consecutive years from 1993 to 1995, including the prestigious ‘Young Executive’ Award.
He was the first Indian Chairman of International Quality and Productivity Centre(IQPC) at the Deepwater Drilling Asia 2005 Convention held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He also had the privilege of being invited as a Keynote speaker for two consecutive years during Petromin Deepwater Conference at Malaysia and at the SEAPEX conference at Singapore. He is a member of several geo-scientific organizations like Association of American Petroleum Geologists and Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Four research scholars have already been awarded doctoral degree under his supervision. He is an exceptional talent who chose to work and contribute for the Indian oil and gas industry inspite of such brilliant overseas records.
Besides being a visiting faculty to may Universities and authoring more than fifty publications in several scientific journals, he has written a book titled “ Geologic Settings and Petroleum Systems of India’s East Coast Offshore Basins; Concepts and Applications”.
He is happily married to Rashmi and they are blessed with two sons. Their younger son is in school and their eldest son is studying medicine.