Oil, toil and turmoil

India's geological potential remains largely unexplored because of policy hostility and high-handed taxation rather than the lack of expertise

The turmoil of war has jerked the entire world back into arranging for energy today, not in a distant emission-free future. India has successfully deflected hypocritical lectures from the West about buying discounted oil from Russia; but the ongoing war of words between the Centre and some state governments over the crushing burden of taxes on petroleum products leaves Indian consumers as helpless as ever.  

The Centre’s high-pitched demand on the states has helped obscure its failure in that during FY 2021-22 India’s domestic oil production fell below 30 million metric tonnes — for the first time since the early 1990s.