(PTI)
Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the increasing dependency on imported fuel should not be seen as a challenge to the energy security programme that the country is building on. Pradhan said the government has taken many initiatives to increase the capacities of alternative sources of energy like solar, wind, biogas, among others.
The country imports more than 82 percent of its daily oil demand, making crude imports the biggest drain on the nation’s foreign exchange, as domestic production has either been stagnant or even declining for long but demand has been on a steady rise, clipping at 4-6 percent per annum. “The rise in oil imports and the dependency on the imported fuel are not going to be hurdles in our energy security programme. Even large economies like Japan and Korea are also net importers of oil. On the contrary, because of our energy diplomacy, we have been able to, for the first time, get a say in oil production in the GCC,” he said.
