Demand of Natural Gas

Demand of Natural Gas

             The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply today that the details of natural gas production during 2014-15 to 2017-18 are as under:

Year	Natural gas production (in mmscmd) *
2014-15 (Actual)	90.993
2015-16 (Projected)	97.43
2016-17 (Projected)	106.33
2017-18 (Projected)	138.33

* The availability of natural gas varies depending upon internal consumption and technical flaring of natural gas.

Presently, the normative requirement of gas for power sector at 70/75 % PLF is around 81.5 mmscmd and after commissioning of 5449 MW of gas based power generation capacity, the normative requirement of gas would be around 102.90 mmscmd.

The current requirement of natural gas for fertilizer sector is 49.321 mmscmd which would increase by 14.4 mmscmd by the end of 2017-18.

The cost of production of natural gas varies  from company to company and field to field depending upon size/type of the reservoir, location of reservoir, operating cost, financing cost, depreciation, depletion and amortization applicable and accounting procedure followed by various E&P companies as well as taxes and duties levied by the Government. The price of domestic natural gas is determined in accordance with the New Domestic Natural Gas Pricing Guidelines, 2014. Save as otherwise provided in the above guidelines, the base price of domestic natural gas supplied from a particular source is same for all consumers irrespective of their location, except for North East Region where the rate is 60% of the notified rate for certain allocations. However, the delivered price of the domestic natural gas may change from State-to-State depending upon transportation charges, State and Local Taxes and levies etc.

Government has taken several steps to improve the availability of gas which, inter-alia, include,  intensification of domestic exploration and production activities through New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) rounds, development of shale gas policy framework, research and development of gas hydrate resources in the country, import of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), exploring possibility of transnational gas pipelines, clearance for exploration and development of some NELP blocks, exploration in the Mining Lease Area with certain conditions and acquisition of overseas oil and gas assets.

MJPS/Rk

(Release ID :121648)