India needs more local discoveries of oil and gas in order to be able to meet future energy demand, the secretary of petroleum and natural gas at the Indian energy ministry said.
“One day, we will be looking at a situation where alternative forms of energy will increasingly matter more for incremental demand satisfaction than fossil fuels,” Pankaj Jain said, as quoted by PTI.
In the immediate term, however, India needs to boost its self-reliance in energy by making new oil and gas discoveries, leveraging cutting-edge exploration technology to that end, Jan said.
The Indian government has put concerted effort into boosting domestic oil and gas production to reduce the country’s overwhelming dependence on imported hydrocarbons, which for oil comes in at over 80%. For natural gas, import dependence is around 50% of consumption.
In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the launch of a national deepwater exploration campaign, saying “India will harness its deepwater energy resources, strengthening energy self-reliance and reducing dependence on foreign fuel imports.”
A month later, Oil India reported its first-ever gas discovery in the Andaman Sea—the first hydrocarbon discovery in the basin ever. The company said the size of the discovery was yet to be determined, but that it contained 87% methane. Rystad Energy said it could become a game-changer for India’s self-reliance in natural gas.
The Andaman Sea is part of a basin system that could hold as much as 22 billion barrels of crude oil, per preliminary estimates. These estimates need to be proven, however, and this would mean large-scale exploration across the basins. This would require substantial investment: to date, only a tenth of India’s sedimentary basins are subject to oil and gas exploration. Earlier this year, oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri said plans were to boost that to 16% by the end of 2025.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
- Windfall Tax Reforms Crucial for North Sea Oil Industry
- Greece Awards Offshore Exploration Blocks to Chevron
- Supertanker Rates Soar as Buyers Scramble to Replace Russian Oil
