Rabi Narayan Bastia

Rabi Narayan Bastia is an Indian geoscientist and the Global Head of Exploration at Lime Petroleum, Norway, known for his contributions in the hydrocarbon explorations at Krishna Godavari Basin, at Mahanadi Basin (2003) and at Cauvery (2007). A non-executive director of Asian Oilfield Services Limited and the President at OilMax Energy, Bastia is a recipient of the Odisha Living Legend Award. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2007, for his contributions to Science and Technology.

Biography Bastia was born on 2 October 1958 in Odisha, India, and graduated in Science from Utkal University. His master's degree came in Applied Geology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur which was followed by a doctoral degree (PhD) in Structural Geology from the same institution. Later, he completed an advanced master's course (MS) in petroleum exploration at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with a first rank. He worked with RIL till 2012 during which time the team led by him was successful in discovering gas at Mahanadi basin of the Northeast coast in 2003 and at Cauvery basin in 2007. By that time, he had already been associated with Lime Petroleum, Norway for two years, as a director, where he is the Global Head of Exploration. He is the President of E&P business at OilMax Energy, a Pune-based project management consultants in the energy sector, concurrently serving Asian Oilfield Services as a non-executive independent director and Hibiscus Petroleum Bernhad, Malaysia as a director, resigning from the latter board in 2014. He also sits in the director boards of Oil Field Instrumentation India Limited and Synergy Oil and Gas Consultancy Pvt Ltd. Besides, he has published over fifty articles in peer reviewed national and international journals and serves as a visiting professor at many universities. He has also mentored four students in their doctoral research and has delivered keynote addresses at several international conferences including the Petromin Deepwater Conference at Malaysia and the SEAPEX Conference at Singapore.

Bastia is married to Rashmi and the couple has two sons.

Awards and honours Bastia was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) by the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, his thesis validated by Alberta University and the University of Oklahoma. This was the first instance a scientist in India receiving the honour for petroleum research. In 1990, the Indian National Science Academy awarded him their Young Scientist Award. While working at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, he received three institutional awards between 1993 and 1995, including the Young Executive Award. The Geological Society of India awarded him the National Mineral Award in 2003 and the Government of India followed it up, three years later, with civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2007; a year earlier, he had received the Gold Medal of the Association of Exploration Geophysicists. The year 2007 brought him two more awards viz. Infraline Service to Nation Award and Ruchi Bharat Gaurav Samman of the Government of Odisha. He was featured in the Who's Who in the World of the American Continental Research in its 2008 edition and the International Biographical Centre listed him among the top 100 educators of the world in 2009. He is also a recipient of the Oceantex Leadership and Excellence Award (2010) and the Odisha Living Legend Award (2011).