India working on new strategy to meet the target of 10 per cent cut in oil impor

Posted by Ankit khatkar on January 31st, 2020

New Delhi: With the government’s aim of reducing India’s oil import dependence by 10 percent by 2022 not picking up pace, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said his ministry is developing a replacement strategy to realize the target.

“Crude oil will continue to play a critical role at this stage of our development in meeting our energy requirements. Our government had set a road-map on reducing India’s petroleum import dependence by 10 percent by 2022. We are developing a replacement strategy and initiatives to realize this target,” he said, speaking at the planet Sustainable Development Summit 2020 organized by TERI here.

India’s oil import dependence has steadily increased to 85 percent during the April-December period of 2019-2020 as compared to 78.3 percent in the financial year 2014-2015, according to data sourced from the ministry.

^{Read more News stories about the Fertilizer sector, Oil and Gas sector, Energy sector and Chemicals sector on our websites.}

The increase in oil import dependence is mainly attributed to the decline in domestic oil production, which fell to 34.2 Million Tonne (MT) in 2018-2019 from 37.5 MT in 2014-2015. In the April-December period of the current financial year (2019-20), the country’s domestic crude oil production declined 6 percent to 24.4 MT.

Pradhan had in December last year said the oil ministry expects natural gas production to increase significantly from the current levels. However, domestic oil production is expected to plateau.

In a bid to curb the country’s rising dependence on imported crude, the oil ministry has been trying to push for higher adoption of natural gas and alternative fuels to displace the demand for crude oil.

“Our energy consumption is projected to grow by 4.2 percent per annum until 2035. India’s share of total global primary energy demand is claimed to double by 11 percent by 2040 driven by strong economic development,” Pradhan said.

Speaking on India’s renewable energy sector, Pradhan said it's expected to make around 3.30 lakh jobs by 2022 and quite 24 million jobs by 2030.