The Centre has planned USD 60 billion investment for creating gas infrastructure in the country till 2024, and gas share in the energy mix is expected to grow to 15 percent by 2030.
The gas infrastructure includes pipelines, LNG terminals and city gas distribution (CGD) networks. At present, gas accounts for six percent in the country’s total energy mix.
The government is ushering a gas-based economy by increasing the share of natural gas in primary energy mix from 6.2 percent to 15 percent by year 2030.
The country’s first automated national-level gas trading platform was launched in June 2020 to promote and sustain an efficient and robust gas market and foster gas trading in the country.
The coverage of CGD projects is being expanded to 232 geographical areas spread over 400 districts, with potential to cover about 53 percent of the country’s geography and 70 percent of population.
The Centre is adopting clean mobility solutions with greater use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a transportation fuel, including long haul trucking. It plans to open 1,000 LNG fuel stations across the country and on the same footstepsthe foundation stone for the nation’s first 50 LNG fuel stations was laid in November 2020.
India has achieved the milestone of completely filling all the strategic petroleum reserves with a total capacity of 5.33 million tonne constructed at Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Mangaluru (Karnataka) and Padur (Kerala) in 2020.
The Centre has initiated the process of establishing another 6.5 million tonne commercial-cum-strategic petroleum storage facilities at Chandikol (Odisha) and Padur, under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.