India in talks with Rosneft to invest in Far East Russian cluster: Pradhan

Union Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said India is in talks with Russia's oil giant Rosneft to invest in Far East Russian cluster for ensuring energy security.

India has already made its biggest energy investments in Russia in the past with state-owned firms having spent close to USD 10 billion in acquiring stakes in oilfields such as Sakhalin-1, Taas-Yuryakh and Vankor and Siberia-focused company Imperial Energy.

"In Russia, we are also negotiating with state-owned company Rosneft to invest in their eastern cluster. With the change in geopolitical situation, the eastern part of Russia is coming as a promising proposition and we are concentrating on that," Pradhan said at the India Economic conclave 2019.

He said the government is interested in investing in producing oil fields in the interest of India's energy security.

On the challenges faced by the country in terms of energy security, he said, "Due to the current geopolitical scenario, there is uncertainty which is affecting the commodity price of energy. For a price sensitive country like India, the emerging economy, with a lot of poor and lower middle class population, where energy is an inevitable part of life, volatility of price is a challenge."

Accepting that nearly 70-80 per cent of our energy requirements are still met through imports, he said the government is also taking various initiatives to switch to cleaner gas and increase the production of gas.

"Through all these initiatives, we are confident we will be reducing our import dependency. Not only that hydrogen is new form of energy we are focused on. India is bound to grow and we will have our own path of energy route which will be self sufficient," Pradhan added.