India plans to double gas production by 2022
The government plans to invest US$2 billion over the next three to five years, especially in deepwater and offshore areas, to increase its natural gas production to 60 billion cubic metre (bcm).
The move is part of its efforts to cut down reliance on imports to meet an anticipated surge in domestic demand, which is likely to top 70 bcm by 2022 and 100 bcm by 2030 from around 50 bcm currently, according to the government’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).
“We have seen a compound annual growth rate of 6.99% in consumption of natural gas for energy purpose during 2011-12 to 2016-17”, said an official at the ministry of petroleum and natural gas.
Natural gas is a key input required for generating power and manufacturing products in the fertilizer and steel industries. Last year the country imported 19 million tonnes of LNG, or 25 bcm, up 15 percent from the previous year, making it the fourth largest consumer of LNG behind Japan, South Korea and China.
This was despite a 2.35 percent growth in domestic gas production to 32.649 million cubic metre last year for the first time after six years of successive decline. Onshore blocks contributed 10,639 million cubic metre, including the output from coal bed methane (CBM) to the overall. Onshore gas production had risen by eight percent in 2017-18 over 9,858 million cubic metre in the previous year, while the offshore gas production declined marginally to 22,011 million cubic metre in 2017-18 from 22,038 cubic metre in the previous year.
Fresh data for six months to September 2018 from the directorate of hydrocarbons show that natural gas production fell 1.43 per cent to 2,684 million cubic meter in the current financial year (April-March) due to a decline in production from fields operated by state-owned Oil India and private or Joint Venture operators.
The country produced 2,723 MMSCM of natural gas in September last year. Cumulatively, gas production declined 0.96 per cent to 16,254 million cubic metre in the first six months (April-September) of 2018-2019.
But going forward officials hope domestic gas production to increase by around 20 million cubic metre over the next four years from new fields being developed by ONGC, OIL, Cairn and RIL-BP, besides some increase in CBM production, which is expected to chip in 5 million cubic metres per day (cmpd) in the next four to five years, up from the current 2 million (cmpd).
