Pomila Jaspal set to be ONGC’s first woman Director (Finance)

New Delhi: Pomila Jaspal is set to be the first woman Director (Finance) of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Limited, a Maharatha PSU under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, as she has been recommended for the post by the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) on Tuesday. She is currently serving as Director (Finance) in Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), a Miniratna PSU under the Petroleum Ministry.

Jaspal has been recommended for the post of Director (Finance) of ONGC Limited from a list of six candidates, who were interviewed by the selection panel. All the candidates, excluding Jaspal, were from ONGC.

Pomila Jaspal

Jaspal is a Fellow Member of ICMAI and a gold medalist and recipient of the Late Mrs Dhanpati Goel Gold Medal from ICMAI. She has obtained BCom (Hons) degree from MCM DAV College, Chandigarh, and MCom from Punjab University. Before joining ONGC, she had a short stint as Lecturer at HMV College, Jalandhar.

Jaspal joined ONGC in 1985 as Finance & Accounts Officer and has risen to the coveted position of Executive Director-Chief Corporate Finance. She has handled varied assignments, including Corporate finance functions such as Direct tax, Indirect tax, Investor relations, Corporate Budget and Project Appraisal etc. She is also the Chairperson of the Women Development Forum, an ONGC forum dedicated to all women employees of ONGC. As a fitting recognition to her illustrious career, she was appointed to the Board of OPaL (ONGC Petro additions Limited) as Director. She has over 35 years of rich experience in various aspects of finance in the oil industry, both from an operating and regulatory perspective. She was the first woman functional director on the Board of MRPL.

During her initial period, after completing three months of induction training at ONGC Academy, she was posted at Head Office, Dehradun, and handled key assignments and later with Joint Venture group at JVOG, Mumbai. She further had the opportunity to hone her skills with a deputation at Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) in its formative years and was instrumental in developing the model Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) for many pre-NELP and NELP blocks. Subsequently, she was deputed to the Contract Cell of MoPNG where she worked in different areas of gas pricing, worked with the Rangarajan Committee, worked on the gas utilisation policy, was part of the royalty committee, oversaw the formulation of policies for smooth implementation of PSCs and monitored the royalty and profit petroleum to the government.

She has also worked with ONGC Videsh, the International subsidiary of ONGC, handling the assignment of In-charge, Project Finance, for the execution of almost all overseas projects (Exploration and Development). She was also actively involved in smooth takeover and execution of new acquisitions of OVL. Subsequently, she became Head-Finance of Assam Asset, ONGC, and handled this challenging assignment for four years.

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