North East India is very rich in resources for energy sector. You may be aware that this region is the “Gongotri” of oil and natural gas. More than 100 years back, oil was struck in the deep jungle of Digboi in Upper Assam. Crude oil and natural gas is still produced in sizeable amount from the oil fields of Assam and other states of NE India. Similarly, coal was also discovered even before oil and gas. NE India has a significant reserve of low ash high sulfur tertiary coal that is very suitable for direct liquefaction. North East India is also endowed with a large network of rivers that carries huge volume of water throughout the year from the hills to the mighty river Brahmaputra. This throws up huge potential for power generation from appropriate hydel projects. The fertile land, abundant rainfall, moderate temperature etc. makes this area very suitable for energy plantation. Also, the presence of large number of algal varieties including those in wet lands offer immense potential for production of bio-fuel from algae. Similarly, the production of large amount of bio-mass from the forests and agricultural products offers the scope of decentralized biomass gasification. The energy resource portfolio is further supplemented by the discovery of uranium in the state of Meghalaya and this raises the potential of generation of nuclear power in NE India.
Unfortunately, when we look at the generation of fuel and power in NE India vis-à-vis the potential, the scenario is not encouraging at all. North East India has a multi fold problem which is the hindrance to the exploitation of the energy potential. On the other hand when we examine the issues closely, we find that the root cause is the non exploitation of the available potential leading to stagnancy in the growth of the region.
Then Governor of Assam His Excellency S.C. Mathur took some initiatives in 2009 to break the vicious circle and bring back the region to the path of growth. As a part of that, a national level energy conference was being organized. The objective is to bring together various organisations, academic and R& D institutes, government agencies involved in the energy business and other stakeholders and evolve a road map for resurgence of NE India as a major power house of the country through synergistic efforts of various organisations.
Before the conference was held a Society in the name of SECONE was formed by the Energy sector organizations operating in North East, India.