Sudden Surge in Demand for Liquified Natural Gas , Hikes Imports by 7 per cent

Gross expansion in the consumption rate by 3.9 per cent in domestic market and shrinkage in the production rate by 3.2 per cent from local production units, rose the import volume of Liquefied Natural Gas at a staggering rate of 6.8 per cent for a period of nine months, till December 2019. The graph of consumption of LNG from April-December 2019 escalated to 51.6 per cent during this period, while a year ago, after comparing the same time period, the consumption scenario was around 47.8 per cent. In December 2019 the dip in the production from the domestic manufacturers drastically reduced to 7.9 per cent and the consumption grew at 5.9 per cent. In addition to this, many Indian buyers of LPG from International countries are unable to gain profit as they are already merged in a long-term contract with the biggest gas supplier, Qatar. Although Qatar has rejected the demand by Indian government to cut short the prices to make the fuel more affordable, the Indian officials have not lost hope. On the other hand, issues like sand incursion in Vasistha and S1 gas field in the Krishna-Godavari basin led to a degradation in LNG quality, which further contributed in lowering the offtake by consumers while increasing LNG imports. However, it is expected that Reliance Industries and Bharat Petroleum will start operating their gas fields from the middle of this year, which will help to bring down the import dependency.