At an energy conference in New Delhi in March 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set out a road map for reducing India’s crude oil imports by 10 per cent by 2022. This at a time when almost 77 per cent of the country’s fuel requirements were met via imports.
Four years later, the “2022 dream” appears to be a distant reality. The share of imports, in fact, increased to 81.7 per cent in 2016-17, 82.9 per cent in 2017-18 and 84.7 per cent in 2018-19, according to the latest available government data.
This is despite the ministry of petroleum and natural gas (MoPNG) taking all possible policy measures — including steps to ramp up production, reforming the Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy, or HELP, and taking a series of de-bottlenecking measures in NELP, or New Exploration Licensing Policy, and pre-NELP regimes.
