Natural Gas in India

"Natural gas is fast emerging as the most important energy source for the future. The abundance of natural gas, worldwide as well as domestically, coupled with its environmental soundness and multiple applications across all sectors, implies that natural gas is going to play an increasingly important role in meeting demand for energy world over.

In India, Natural Gas got attention as a fuel of importance in the last 2 decades when the Government setup Gas Authority of India Limited to handle the gas distribution business. Till that time, ONGC and OIL were looking after production and distribution of natural gas. Since the last one and a half decade, natural gas started finding a number of usages as an environment friendly high efficiency fuel. With the turn of Century, the following key developments marked a key milestone in the growth of natural gas sector as an industry:

1. Hydrocarbon Vision 2025 predicted huge demand supply gap and emphasized the need of bridging the gap. 2. Besides ever growing need of Power and Fertilizer sectors, natural gas started finding its usage also in other industries such as petrochemicals, transportation, sponge iron, glass and ceramics. 3. A number of LNG Terminals were planned, some of which have are now already in their construction phase. 4. New gas pipeline infrastructure started coming up. 5. E&P activities in NELP blocks started giving very encouraging results. 6. Gas Prices were taken up for revision. 7. More number of domestic and international players started taking interest in the sector.

All these activities put the Indian Natural Gas market firmly on the World Energy Map and the sector started drawing attention from Infrastructure Developers, Financial Institutions, Equipment Manufacturers, EPC Contractors, Consultants, Management and Legal Advisors, from world over etc."