Reserves:
India has 26 sedimentary basins covering 3.14 million sq. km of area. About 44 % of India’s total sedimentary basin area is on-land 56% is offshore. Only 22 % of the total area falls under the category “Moderately to well explored”. Exploration efforts have been initiated in 44 % of the area and the balance 34% remains poorly to completely unexplored.
Various Government initiatives:
- India’s quest to increase the share of natural gas in the overall energy mix hinges crucially on two factors:
- Development of pipelines
- Hassle free exploration.
- In this regard, the govt. has taken several measures.
- The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) is a policy indicating the new contractual and fiscal model for the award of hydrocarbon acreages towards exploration and production (E&P).
- The Government has envisaged developing and expanding the National Gas Grid. At present about 16,788 Km natural gas pipeline is operational and about 14,239 Km gas pipelines are being developed.
- The Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga (PMUG) pipeline project currently under will provide connectivity to another flagship project, the North-East Gas Grid.
- The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which aims to provide free cooking gas connections to poor families is also a roaring success.
- Moreover, India is constantly moving to revive the 1,814-kilometre-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) transnational gas pipeline which is in shamble for years.
- The government brought a series of reforms in the Gas sector and as a result investment of more than Rs. 70,000 crores are being made on the East coast very recently.
- Gas production from the East coast will contribute to Atmanirbhar Bharat by meeting the increasing energy needs of the country.
- The domestic gas production has complete marketing and pricing freedom. All discoveries and field development plans approved after 28 Feb 2019 have a complete market and pricing freedom.
- Government is adopting clean mobility solutions with greater use of LNG (liquefied natural gas) as a transportation fuel, including long-haul trucking. 1,000 LNG fuel stations have been planned across the country.
