Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan has invited private investors to participate and make the most of the India growth story.
Speaking at a roadshow for Discovered Small Field-II bids here on Monday, Pradhan underlined that India has made giant strides in oil and gas sector in the last four years but the best is yet to come. No country, international organisation or company alone can go far without partnership and collaboration, Pradhan added.
Pradhan pointed out that India is presently the third largest energy consumer in the world. Energy consumption in India in the past decade has increased at a compound annual growth rate of more than 5 per cent. In future too, he highlighted, energy consumption in India is expected to rise by more than 4 per cent annually.
"Globally, the majority of the growth in energy demand is going to come from India. Our oil and gas demand is expected to increase nearly three- fold from 229 Million Metric Tons currently to 607 Million Metric Tons in 2040. There are several bright prospects in upstream oil and gas sector in India," Pradhan emphasised.
The minister said that the Indian government has undertaken measures to overhaul the policy framework encompassing the entire energy value chain to ensure energy security for the country.
"One of the most important areas of focus to ensure energy security is towards the E&P sector. Both Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy and Discovered Small Fields Policy are progressive measures aimed at facilitating investment for exploration in Indian acreages. 55 blocks spread across 10 sedimentary basins under maiden Bid Round of Open Acreages Licensing Policy were recently awarded after a gap of six years," Pradhan said.
In 2016, the Indian government launched Discovered Small Fields Bid Round-I which was a sterling success with 30 contract areas being awarded to 20 companies. The successful completion of DSF Round-I and OALP-I have given India immense confidence, and the second round of DSF and OALP are being launched.
Describing this as an unparalleled opportunity, Pradhan explained DSF II includes 60 discoveries with an estimated in-place reserve of over 195 Million Metric Tons of Oil and Oil Equivalent Gas. OALP Bid Round II includes 14 Blocks with a total area of 29,233 square kilometres.
Pradhan said that the Government of India has also brought out various other policy reforms including Coal Bed Methane policy, incentivize Enhanced Recovery for augmenting production of oil and gas from matured fields, exploration and exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbon from all fields.
He added that a state of the art National Data Repository (NDR) has been set up which is a database of all the geo-scientific data of hydrocarbon resources in the country. Pradhan further pointed out that NDR is equipped with cutting-edge technology and provides ready access to interested companies.
The Minister said that India accords high priority to promoting a gas-based and clean economy. Currently natural gas forms a relatively small share of our energy mix.
"Gas infrastructure projects of over 8 billion US dollars are under implementation across the country. We aim to increase the share of natural gas in the energy mix from current 6.5 per cent to 15 per cent by 2022. Going forward, we intend to create a robust natural gas trading hub. The process to formalise the concept has already been initiated by our Government," Pradhan concluded.
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