V K Sibal has resigned from the post of Director General of Hydrocarbons — less than a week before his five-year-term comes to an end — after word reached him that the CBI had found evidence of his “nexus” with private exploration firms and service providers.

Last Friday, the CBI informed the Central Vigilance Commission that its probe into the documents submitted by the CVC — as well as some accessed by the CBI — had substantiated allegations of Sibal’s links with key players in the oil and gas business.

Based on the CBI’s report which recommended registration of cases, the CVC yesterday rejected the Vigilance clearance for Sibal’s second term as the head of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons.

Ruffled by the CVC’s disapproval, the Petroleum Ministry today rushed an apology to the Department of Personnel & Training seeking withdrawal of its earlier proposal to grant an ad-hoc extension to Sibal, sources said.

Sibal, who heads the deemed regulatory body for the upstream exploration sector, sent his resignation to Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey on Monday, sources said. He has not been attending office since that day.

Sources said the CBI has found evidence of Sibal’s alleged collusion with exploration firms in four of the five cases put before the investigative agency, the prominent ones being Comet Energy Solutions, Quest Petroleum and GX Technologies.

It found that the DGH rented an office in Noida which was owned by Comet Energy Solutions India (P) Ltd, a firm which bought a three-bedroom apartment in Mumbai for providing accommodation to Sibal’s daughter from April 2008 to August this year. It found that Comet Energy was owned by Manjula Sethi, whose husband Naresh Sethi owns almost all shares in Energy World Development Ltd of Hong Kong which has links with GX Technologies, a firm that was awarded a seismic survey contract by DGH in 2006.

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