India believes that access to energy must be affordable and reliable, says Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Housing & Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri in his welcome remarks at Fifth India Energy Forum by CERAWeek at New Delhi.

Puri said, "The global economy needs clean, affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy to speed up the post-pandemic recovery. We need to accept that the world needs a reliable supply of oil and gas until we can build new energy infrastructure."

The Minister said, "The current levels of oil and gas prices are too high. India is 85% dependent on imported oil while the import dependence is about 55% for gas. He said that 20% of the country’s import bill is from these items. The import bill of these items has almost gone up by almost three times in the last quarter compared to last year’s corresponding quarter."

He said that the extreme volatility and high prices have led to a surge in the domestic prices of hydrocarbon fuels and high prices of oil has an impact on the economies, leading to surge in inflation and affecting the logistics cost.

Describing the situation as the wakeup call, Puri said that if prices are not brought under control, global economic recovery could be fragile.

Puri said, "India is accelerating its efforts to become a gas-based economy. About US $60 billion investment is underway in the country in setting up the infrastructure - pipelines, terminals, regasification facilities, etc. The country is on the path of “One Nation-One Grid”, with the pipeline length going to increase from 19,000 km to 35,000 km."

He said that area under exploration is also increasing, and the country has undertaken a plethora of reforms, so that there is more investment in the E&P sector.

Regarding Bio-fuels, the Minister said, "Ethanol-blending has already reached 10%, and we are determined to take it to 20% soon. Under the SATAT scheme, 5,000 CBG plants are being set up, with the investment of US $20 billion. To promote electric vehicles, thousands of charging stations are being installed."

The minister said that to usher in transition to green energy, the Hydrogen Mission is being launched.