Mani Shankar Aiyar is a brave man. He is being feted in Tehran and lionised in Lahore. He is hunting for hydrocarbons in the areas where us-fearing angels fear to tread. He is exhorting oil Navaratnas-the trustees of our family silver-to squeeze oil out of the country's rocks, and scoop up crude from the depths of foreign seabeds. This is all a part of Aiyar's fundamentally secular worldwide view: India's economic boom is on steroids; but it needs oil and gas-lots and lots of it-to keep the momentum going.

But the going isn't easy. China uses every trick in the book to trump India's quest for oil as it forges ahead in the global hunt for hydrocarbons; the us and other Western nations jealously guard their oil security in the sandy wastes of Arabia and the newly independent countries of Central Asia. Indian companies, thus, have little choice but to pick up the crumbs the West and China don't want.

Aiyar is, therefore, left with few options. He is betting big on a pipeline to transport Iranian gas to India via Pakistan. But the political risks associated with this project are staggering. Aiyar says he's been to Pakistan 17 times in the last 23 years and thinks he knows who he's dealing with (see There Is No us Pressure...). He adds that the Pakistani government has assured him that it will address India's security concerns and that subsequent negotiations will prove whether the initial trust he's invested in his counterparts from across the border is justified or not.

But what really blots his record is the political interference in the PSUs under his ministry. Aiyar talks of autonomy for PSU oil companies, yet he ordered the GAIL India board to put the tendering process for the Rs 1,800-crore Dahej-Uran pipeline on hold. Even as the media-savvy Aiyar grabs headlines, it's precisely this interference in the autonomy of PSUs that hampers their global ambitions. Example: China National Petroleum Corporation trumped ONGC's bids for oil blocks in Sudan and Angola because the powers-that-be did not clear the requisite financing on time.

Besides, he has stymied all attempts to de-subsidise the prices of LPG and kerosene. The result: under-recoveries of Rs 22,000 crore by oil marketing companies last fiscal. How Aiyar squares this circle will be interesting to watch.

Despite this, Aiyar's real contribution lies in energising what was, till he took over, just another moribund government department, more in the news for all the wrong reasons (two of his recent predecessors faced serious corruption charges). He has proactively taken the bull by the horns and aggressively led Indian companies-both in the public and private sectors-into the global hunt for hydrocarbon assets.

His profile and his pronouncements have often brought him into conflict with the minister and the mandarins in the Foreign Office. But such turf wars are common in any government. The fact is that Aiyar has emerged as the brash new face of Indian economic diplomacy. In doing so, he's reset the agenda of the foreign ministry and given it a completely new direction.