India on track to achieve 10% cut in crude oil import by 2022: Pradhan

The government is on track to meet the target of cutting India’s oil import dependence by 10 per cent by 2020, Petroleum Minnister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the ‘Urja Sangam’ conference in March 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that India needs to bring down its oil import dependence from 77 per cent in 2013-14, to 67 per cent by 2022, when India will celebrate its 75th year of independence.

Further, the dependence can be cut to half by 2030, he had said.

But with consumption growing at a brisk pace and domestic output remaining stagnant, India’s oil import dependence has risen from 82.9 per cent in 2017-18, to 83.7 per cent in 2018-19, according to the oil ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).