The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas has set up a Hydrogen Corpus Fund in the wake of interest across the world on the use of hydrogen as an auto fuel.  The Government of India is of the view that the Indian Oil Industry should also work synergistically and in continuous coordination with reputed technological institutions to make headway in this frontier area. With this object in mind, the Ministry has set up a hydrogen corpus fund of Rs.100 crore with contribution from OIDB and Oil PSUs as under:

1.    OIDB                -    Rs. 40.00 crore.
2.    ONGC, IOC and GAIL        -    Rs. 16.00 crore each.
3.    HPCL and BPCL            -    Rs. 6.00 crore each.

Centre for High Technology (CHT) is the Nodal Agency for executing HCF projects. OIDB is directed to maintain the Bank Account of the fund. A total corpus of Rs. 129.00 crore (approx.) exists as on 31.3.2016 under HCF. 

All the eight approved HCF projects have since been completed at a cost of Rs. 27.00 crore. There are no projects in pipeline. Keeping in the view of the poor track record of utilization of fund and the fact that there are no proposals forthcoming since, 2011, in a meeting held under the Chairmanship of Special Secretary & FA, MOP&NG on 17.03.2015, a decision was taken to disband HCF. It was also decided to complete the ongoing projects by 31-03-2016 and to refund the contribution made by the participating organization including OIDB towards the Corpus. The HCF, however, could not be disbanded as no official directions/orders from Government were received in this regard. Pending decision on the matter, an alternative that could be considered to enhance the scope of HCF to include R&D activities for development of alternative fuels besides hydrogen under the HCF.