India’s natural gas demand may jump 60% by 2030, LNG imports likely to more than double, says IEA

In presumption of the anticipated maturation successful state consumption, the multilateral vigor bureau recommended that India should wholly deregulate pricing of home earthy gas, unbundle state selling and proscription businesses, and absorption connected enhancing gas-related infrastructure and ensuring state proviso security, among others.

“India’s earthy state depletion is forecast to summation by astir 60% by 2030, driven by robust maturation successful metropolis state distribution, concern demand, and powerfulness generation… Targeted strategies and argumentation interventions could boost state depletion beyond the forecasted trajectory to astir 120 bcm/yr by 2030, adjacent to the existent state depletion of the full continent of South America,” the IEA said successful its peculiar work ‘India Gas Market Report: Outlook to 2030’.

The targeted strategies mentioned by the IEA see driving higher utilisation of gas-based powerfulness plants, faster adoption of LNG successful heavy-duty transport, and further accelerating enlargement of metropolis state infrastructure.

Following implicit a decennary of dilatory maturation and periodic declines, India’s earthy state request accrued by much than 10 per cent successful 2023 arsenic good arsenic 2024, indicating an “inflection point”, according to the IEA. India aims to summation the stock of earthy state successful its superior vigor premix to 15 per cent by 2030 from a small implicit 6 per cent currently.

“While full state depletion successful 2023 was lone marginally higher than 2011 levels, 3 cardinal factors are present converging to thrust important growth: accelerated infrastructure, recovering home production, and an expected easing of planetary state marketplace conditions,” the bureau said.

But India’s home state production, which met astir fractional of the country’s state request successful 2023, is expected to turn lone moderately done 2030. This means that overmuch of the expected state depletion surge volition person to beryllium serviced done import of LNG, oregon super-chilled gas.

“Between 2013 and 2023, India’s LNG imports accrued by 70%, and reached 36 bcm successful 2024, matching the erstwhile grounds acceptable successful 2020 and cementing the country’s presumption arsenic the fourth-largest LNG importer globally. Looking ahead, India’s LNG request is projected to turn steadily, reaching 64 bcm/yr by 2030. This represents an yearly mean maturation complaint of 11% for the 2023-2030 period, doubly the mean complaint observed successful the erstwhile 10 years,” the IEA said.

The IEA, however, cautioned that India should undertake strategical readying successful LNG procurement and import infrastructure implicit the coming years arsenic the state could look a widening spread betwixt contracted LNG proviso and projected demand, peculiarly aft 2028. This could perchance summation the country’s vulnerability to LNG terms volatility unless caller semipermanent contracts are secured. Indian LNG importers are successful the marketplace to ink much semipermanent LNG contracts to unafraid supplies for the adjacent fewer years.

The bureau noted that infrastructure improvement is playing a important relation successful enabling state marketplace maturation successful India. Since 2019, the state has astir quadrupled the fig of compressed earthy state (CNG) stations and much than doubled the fig of residential state connections. The state has besides expanded its earthy state transmission pipeline web by 40 per cent. By 2030, CNG stations and residential state connections are apt to treble again, portion the state transmission grid whitethorn grow by different 50 per cent.

“The metropolis state organisation assemblage is expected to pb depletion maturation successful India betwixt present and 2030, supported by accelerated CNG infrastructure enlargement and competitory pricing against liquid fuels. The dense manufacture and manufacturing sectors are expected to adhd astir 15 bcm of request during this period, portion state usage successful lipid refining is forecast to summation by much than 4 bcm arsenic much refineries link to the network,” the IEA said.