Thursday, August 12, 2010

Indian Natural Gas: Policy And Governance Issue

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago on the geological context of Indian shale gas potential. Indian sedimentary basins have considerable potential in both conventional natural gas as well as shale gas. These resources are being hailed as critical to India's future energy needs.

But geological presence has to be translated into effective use of this resource and how the produced natural gas is to be most efficiently allocated to various sectors is a question that has not been satisfactorily fleshed out at the policy level. The big users of natural gas are 1) Feed stock for fertilizer 2) Power generation 3) Transportation.

Here is an example of the kind of thinking and debate going on within policy and energy expert community regarding best utilization of the gas resources keeping in mind India's food security, need to reduce oil imports, and achieving a cleaner emissions profile. These have been written by energy experts of Prayas Energy Group based in Pune.

Towards a rational, objective natural gas utilization policy, Ashok Shreenivas and Girish Sant, June 2009

Shortcomings in governance of natural gas sector, Ashok Sreenivas, Girish Sant, July 2009

Worth a read to get a flavor of the debates concerning policy and governance issues regarding these resources.

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