In an important development, the state Cabinet at its weekly meeting on Wednesday approved the draft Bill for setting up a Gujarat petroleum university in the “knowledge corridor zone” near Gandhinagar. The Government will bring the Bill in the coming Assembly budget session so as to enact a separate law for the university.

Described as the first of its kind in the country, the university will start functioning from the next academic year (July 2007), with the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) being its nodal agency. The university will have a board of governors that will comprise private, national as well as international players from the oil/gas sector, besides others.

In fact, the post-graduate diploma course in petroleum management is already being offered to students at the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute (GERMI) set up near Gandhinagar. The various higher technical courses will be introduced when the university starts functioning from July at its newly-constructed building in the GERMI premises.

In a post-Cabinet meeting statement issued late in the evening, government spokesmen I K Jadeja and Saurabh Patel said BE (petroleum energy) and B Tech degree courses would be introduced at the university, and also the PG diploma course in petroleum management being offered at the GERMI would be converted into an MBA degree course. Five management courses at graduate, post-graduate and doctorate level, and also 16 technical courses will be offered at the new university, which include petroleum engineering, gas and refinery engineering, pipeline engineering, petroleum exploration and production, petroleum geology and geo-physics, energy and petroleum management.

... contd.