India’s Natural Gas Infrastructure: Reassessing Challenges and Opportunities

This article describes India’s energy situation in the midst of current economic and geopolitical challenges while highlighting some of the key issues pertaining to India’s natural gas infrastructure. The infrastructure dealt with in this article includes natural gas grids (networks of natural gas pipelines) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals which are planned to be expanded further, as well as transnational gas pipelines from and through countries like Iran, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, which have been pursued by the Indian government for a long time. Other infrastructure such as city gas distribution, consisting of Piped Natural Gas (PNG) for domestic and commercial use and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for use in automobile industries, remains outside the scope of this article. The article further highlights how such an energy situation coupled with poor natural gas infrastructure has deepened India’s energy crisis, characterised by poor performance of the power sector, particularly those run on natural gas. It gives some recommendations for improving such infrastructure and better gas diplomacy for its transnational gas pipelines which could lead to better and faster distribution of natural gas across the country. The article also highlights the preferred course of action for the government, besides offering policy prescriptions in due course.