Major oil, gas discoveries ensure energy security

The government remains bullish on domestic oil and gas sector even as serious bottlenecks in areas like land acquisition, fund mobilisation and timely regulatory approval are hampering growth in other infrastructure sectors.

India has made major oil and gas discoveries in recent years that should go a long way in ensuring the country’s energy security. And the credit goes to the national exploration licensing policy (Nelp) which has helped in expediting the government’s exploration programme by attracting private investment. Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Scottish company Cairn Energy have made most significant discoveries from blocks awarded under the Nelp regime. Production from these discoveries—natural gas available from RIL’s K-G D6 block and crude oil from Cairn

Energy’s Barmer block in Rajasthan — have dramatically changed India’s energy sector scenario. Sectors like power and fertilisers that use natural gas as fuel and feedstock have also benefited from the D6 gas. These discoveries find special mention in the Survey.

“Availability of gas from K-G D6 and utilisation of surplus gas available on fallback basis resulted in better utilisation of capacity, higher plant load factor and high growth in electricity generated from gas-based plants,” the Survey has noted. With 75% of total oil consumption in the country being met via imports, the dependence on imports for petroleum and petroleum products continues to be high. During the past five years, domestic supply of crude oil stands at 34 mmt and natural gas at about 32 billion cubic metric tonne. “With 15 new oil and gas discoveries during the current fiscal, domestic availability is expected to improve. During 2009-10, the projected production for crude oil is 36.7 mmt, compared with 33.5 mmt in 2008-09. This is due to increase in crude oil production from Rajasthan (2.4 mmt) and the K-G deepwater (0.8 mmt). The projected production for natural gas, including coal bed methane in 2009-10 is 52.8% higher than the actual production of 32.8 bcm in 2008-09. The increase in gas production is primarily from the K-G block.”

Source: Financial Express


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