Appraising country's hydrocarbon potential: Government

The government is currently in the process of extensively appraising the hydrocarbon potential in the country, a senior officer said on Thursday.

"India is concentrating on becoming a gas-based economy and moving away from its dependency on fossil fuels. In the developed nations, the share of gas in energy mix averaged 25 per cent whereas in India it stood at 6 per cent. Thus, there is a need to explore more avenues to enhance use of gas as fuel and other energy requirements," K.D. Tripathi, Secretary in the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas was quoted as saying in a statement.

He was addressing Ficci's 4th National Conference on Energy Security on the theme of 'Energy Transition-Building a New Energy Security Architecture'.

"A National Data Repository programme has been launched to gather relevant data which could be provided to potential investors for making informed exploration decisions," the statement said, adding that the government has also revamped the process of procurement and assimilation of data to make it more precise and easily accessible to stakeholders.

The fundamental change in the coal block auction and the revenue-sharing model has enabled the stakeholders to work actively in the sector, Tripathi said.

He added that the government was making efforts to make energy accessible at an affordable price to the people at large.

--IANS

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