Budget 2021-22 wishlist: Here are the key challenges in oil & gas sector

Key challenges
 
Slow transition to low carbon fuels: For India to continue as a leader in fighting climate change, there is a need to focus on hydrogen economy and deploy carbon negative technologies like carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS)
 
Challenges to gas-based economy: To achieve the target of increasing gas share to 15 per cent of energy mix, there is a need to democratise gas sale and purchase, create signif­icant LNG import units, enable free access to infrastr­ucture and make gas swap practical
 
Crude oil and natural gas production decline: The production is on a steady decline over the past five years due to maturing fields. All stops need to be removed to let new production come online
 
Low prices for domestic gas: Low gas price cycles are posing challenges to new upstream gas projects in deep-water fields
 
CGD sector needs improved ecosystem: CGD Geographical Area licences are allo­tted, although gas availa­bility, third party access perati­onalisation, contr­actual sustenance, and fina­ncing constraints seem to bottleneck to take-off
 
Industry ask
 

• Bringing natural gas under the ambit of classical GST
•  Liberalise gas pricing by allowing the buyers to purchase the gas at higher than domestically capped prices
•  Accelerating ethanol and biogas sectors’ development through capacity creation