The Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas & Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Shri Dharmendra Pradhan has said that Energy is a key driver of economic growth and thus, our Government’s focus has been to bring about transformational changes in the energy landscape of India to fulfil the twin objectives of energy justice and climate justice. Speaking at a Programme here today, he said that the Indian energy sector is at the herald of a new beginning; with the energy vision laid down by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The four energy pillars viz. Energy Access, Energy Efficiency, Energy Sustainability and Energy Security; has to be seen in tandem for a stable energy future. The Petroleum Ministry has endeavored to “Reform, Perform and Transform’ the sector.In a span of four years, the government has taken several reforms and accomplished major task with far-reaching impacts. India’s per capita energy consumption is around 1/3rd of the World’s average and we must change this while being energy efficient.
Shri Pradhan said that Prime Minister Modi’s goal of transforming life’s of our people by providing them an equitable access to clean and affordable energy will continue to remain basis for building New India. He said that Energy is a key enabler in supporting India’s economic growth and seeing to fruition the aspirations of the growing middle class. Currently, we are the third largest energy consumer in the world after US and China. Our energy demand would grow three-fold by 2040.
Shri Pradhan said that Under COP21, our government has made voluntary commitments to reduce the emission intensity of GDP by 33% by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels. Moving towards gas based economy is a critical step towards achieving COP21 targets. Largest ever roll-out of city gas distribution networks across India has been undertaken to enable inclusive growth. Work is underway on 2600 km long Jagdishpur-Haldia and Bokaro-Dhamra pipeline project also known as Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga project. In order to connect north eastern states with gas grid, Indradhanush Gas Grid Ltd has been formed to lay 1500 km pipeline with an investment of Rs 6000 cr.The work on the new LNG terminals of Ennore in Tamil Nadu and Dhamra in Odisha at a cost of Rs.10 thousand crores are under progress in speedy manner and soon these would become the hub for supplying imported gas to the eastern and southern states of the country. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has transformed the life of over 6 crore poor women. Additional 12.5 crore LPG connections have been given in last 4 years taking our LPG coverage today to 90% from 55% in 2014. Ujjwala Yojana has brought about multiple positive benefits in the form of health, economic empowerment and environmental benefits.Government has launched a scheme to produce Bio CNG by setting up 5000 Bio-CNG plants in next five years. These plants will not only help tackle the problem of agricultural waste burning but also bring monetary benefits to farmers. He said that the government has made significant increase in ethanol procurement price for blending program to support sugarcane farmers. Work is also underway to establish 12 modern bio-refineries at a cost of Rs. 10,000 crore to produce 2nd generation ethanol. A bold decision has been taken to directly leapfrog to BS-VI by 2020 from BS-IV. In fact BS VI quality fuel has already been introduced in national capital Delhi from April 2018 itself.
On the achievements in the upstream sector, Shri Pradhan said that we have given the impetus to acquisition and development of overseas equity oil and gas assets. Our recent efforts to jointly develop oil and gas projects in Russia’s Arctic shelf and Pechora and Okhotsk Seas during Russian President Vladimir Putin’ visit is a testimony to this. He admitted that our dwindling domestic oil and gas production is a concern and the Government has made major changes to address it. The most transformative reform in the exploration and production sector is moving to a revenue sharing model and opening the entire sedimentary basin to investors through open acreage licensing. Various relaxations have been provided under the existing PSCs to provided adequate flexibility to operators to enable early development of discoveries. A centralized National Data Repository (NDR) with visualization facilities, for all the E&P data pertaining to the entire sedimentary basinal area, has been set up. Fiscal incentives have been provided to operators for adopting advanced techniques for enhanced recovery of oil and gas. Complete marketing and pricing freedom has been given to gas producers under HELP, DSF and CBM regime and higher price ceiling for production from HP-HT, Deepwater and Ultra Deepwater fields.
Shri Pradhan said that as a next step, we would soon be setting up a gas trading hub that will allow easy and ready access to gas suppliers and buyers to freely trade natural gas and in turn help India to develop its own hub based pricing. The global investor industry is today keenly looking at Indian energy sector as an attractive investment destination. About 300 billion dollars would be invested in coming decade. Asia’s biggest green oil refinery cum-petrochemical complex is being set up in the state of Maharashtra at a cost of about $ 40 billion dollars by OMCs along with Saudi Aramco and ADNOC.
