Ms. Sushma Rawat, has taken over the charge of Director (Exploration), ONGC from 1 January 2023. She takes over the reins of Nation's top Exploration position in the flagship NOC E&P Company. Ms. Rawat is also the Chairperson of ONGC TERI Biotech Limited and on Board of ONGC Tripura Power Company Limited; she had been on the Board of ONGC Petro Additions Ltd.

An industry veteran with over 33 years experience and Exploration Manager par excellence with diverse professional and industry expertise, she brings with her a richness and diversity of perspectives that will benefit the organization in its exploration strategies.

A Post-Graduate in Geology, she has an "International Certificate Program in Business Management" course at ASCI, Hyderabad and at Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana (FELU), Slovenia, in 2014, under the aegis of DPE.

She started her career as GT in ONGC as an operations geologist at Cauvery Basin in 1989. After stints at KDMIPE Dehradun followed by Kerala-Konkan Basin in Mumbai, she again joined KDMIPE in 2013 and under her dynamic leadership, Basin scale 3D-Petroleum Systems Modeling of 11 Basins was carried out.

As Basin Manager of A&AA Basin, her dynamic efforts earned praise for induction of several new technologies and resolution of various long-pending issues like exploration in DAB areas, simplification of Forest clearance and LAQ process. Realizing the significance of industry academia collaboration, her initiatives resulted in MOUs being signed with North East Hill University NEHU, Shillong and CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat, to carry out collaborative projects under strategic alliances.

Ms. Rawat, as an integral part of Government of India’s initiative for appraising the un-appraised basins of the country and bringing new areas in exploration fold, headed the MDT team for Resource re-assessment of Mumbai Offshore Basin. Ms. Rawat was the Lead member of the ONGC team for identifying and assessing of new areas in Cat-I, Cat-II and Cat-III basins of the country and was also the Nodal person for working out the requirement & techno-financial details of parametric wells and planning of NSP lines in all Lesser Explored Basins (Cat-II & III) and un-probed areas of Cat-I basins of India. Her Work-flow for PFA (Play Fairway Analysis) based on 3D BPSM studies became a template & standard Work-Flow for subsequent PFAs done in ONGC.

She has published a number of technical papers in national and international forums which includes technical presentations made in EAGE & SEG platforms abroad Her visionary work on “Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation & Benchmarking of R&D Projects in an Integrated National Oil Company", presented at ASCI Hyderabad and “Process & Parameters - Driver for Furtherance of Exploration Investment” presented at FIPI R&D Conclave-2019 were widely acclaimed by the E&P fraternity.

An avid geologist, she participated in and organized numerous Geological Field workshops on Modern Deltas in Kakinada, Cretaceous of Trichinapalli, Jurassic of Kutch, Triassic of Spiti, Himalayan Foreland basin around Mussoorie-Dehradun and Karakoram-Zanskar around Leh. She has been actively associated as a founding member of various geotechnical societies along with organizing International G&G Conferences like PETROTECH and GEO-India.

Considering ONGC’s Exploration thrust for bringing up more Category II and III basins to the Hydrocarbon Map of India, the exploration fraternity of ONGC is looking up to her valuable stewardship in the domain of Data-driven decision optimization in oil and gas value chain.