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The government will create a 'think-tank' that will help achieve the import reduction and transition to gas economy targets.
Speaking to journalists at the India Energy Forum by CERAWeek, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan said, "We are forming an internal think tank consisting of experts to advise on technology and build a successful gas network in the country. This is being formed to reduce the target set by the Prime Minister to reduce oil import dependence by 10 per cent"
Pradhan said that Executive Vice President of Regions and Chief Executive of Alternative Energy at BP, Dev Sanyal, Executive vice president Technology at Schlumberger, Ashok Belani, Economist and Head of Government Committee on natural gas price, Vijay Kelkar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Bank, Chanda Kochhar will be a part of this think tank.
Chief of the New Development Bank of BRICS countries, K V Kamath, Managing Director of Hindalco Industries, Satish Pai and Chief Executive Officer at Delonex Energy, Rahul Dhir will also be a part of this think tank.
The think tank will be in an advisory role and will look after gas infrastructure, financing model for projects, price competitiveness among others, he added.
Pradhan said that in the next 10 years, India is offering project scope for $ 300 billion looking into our future demand for hydrocarbons.
Gas consumption
He also said that the government will soon be coming with a gas exchange platform."
"The gas exchange is in the interest of the Indian consumer. The world average of gas consumption is 24 per cent, Gujarat's gas consumption is 26 per cent and India's gas consumption is 6 per cent to 7 per cent," he said.
"The primary idea is to put in some of the domestic gas. In the future, all new production will have marketing freedom. We are offering this platform for marketing trading network and putting imported LNG. This will be familiar to the pooling mechanism already present in the fertiliser sector," he explained.
"We want to enable the pooling mechanism through a transparent exchange," he added.
Pradhan said that the government will soon be moving cabinet and taking approval for the same.
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