Energy Security Is The Key, Need To Cut Dependence On Imports Over Next Few Years

The amount of coal that we are importing now has already touched about 173 million tonnes and it will touch nearly 200 million tonnes in the next few years' time.

It implies a massive foreign exchange outgo and it is actually going to put a lot of pressure in terms of handling coal from ports to the place where the coal is needed to generate electricity.

In terms of oil, we are now importing 70-80% and in terms of gas, particularly LNG, we are importing more or less everything that we need because the domestic production is not as high as it should be.

So the challenge of course is to, first of all, look at the issues in these three segments--- coal, gas and oil --- from the perspective of energy security, because if we continue to import in this magnitude, even disregarding the challenge it poses to the macro economy given the subsidies we need to give and the amount of pressure it puts on the current account deficit, it is an energy security issue.

Thus, no country can afford to rely on such a large quantity of imported fuel to meet the domestic requirement and, as you know, anything can cause disruption in the supply chain. Look at the Malaysia Airlines flight.

Nobody knows where it has gone, despite the fact that we have such an advanced technology. What it means is that there are a lot of issues on which we have no control and if something goes wrong and if the supply line gets disrupted, we will be in big trouble. We do not have strategic reserves in India unlike the US. The US is more or less now becoming, thanks to shale gas, less dependent on imports and will be a net exporter of gas.

So the point is, how do we meet the challenge of increasing our domestic production of gas, oil and coal? As far as coal is concerned, we have almost 7-8% of the world's coal reserves and the bulk of it is still not explored.

The same is the case with oil and gas, where 48% of the sedimentation is still not explored and the production is not very high in case of the 52% of the sedimentation which has been already explored.

Source:- economictimes.indiatimes.com