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India bets on LNG fuelling stations
As part of its strategy to reduce emissions, India is betting on liquefied natural gas (LNG) to fuel its road transportation sector. The clean fuel promotion attempt involves exploring setting up of LNG filling stations. This comes in the backdrop of India’s petroleum and natural gas ministry planning a pilot programme on LNG-run vehicles in Kerala. Going forward, the strategy is to fuel long-haul commercial vehicles and trains with LNG.
“We are confident that the pilot project will have desirable results after which we shall begin work on its filing stations across India,” said a petroleum ministry official requesting anonymity.
Another government official, requesting anonymity, confirmed the strategy. LNG is transported in ships with a regasification terminal required to convert the fuel to gas. India has a regasification capacity of 25 million tonnes per annum. In order to meet India’s gas demand, the government plans to increase the country’s LNG import capacity to at least 50 million tonne in the next few years.Queries emailed to a petroleum ministry spokesperson on 28 October remained unanswered. India in June launched a programme to run two-wheelers on compressed natural gas. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government plans to move towards a gas-based economy, in sync with its commitment made by ratifying the Paris climate change deal to reduce carbon footprint. “This is being done to promote the usage of clean fuel in the country. India has been looking to shift to relatively cleaner sources of fuel and this falls in lie with the same,” said Sanjay Grover, partner at EY, a consultancy.
According to a June report by the World Health Organization, half of the world’s most polluted cities are in India, including the capital city of New Delhi. The NDA government has been working towards expanding the country’s gas grid with a target of providing piped domestic cooking gas connections to every household in eastern India by 2020. It is also planning to set up multiple bio-compressed natural gas plants in the country.
However, natural gas currently contributes 6.5% to India’s energy mix, though the government plans to raise the contribution to 15%. India’s natural gas demand is expected to grow from 473 million standard cu. metre per day (mscmd) now to 494 mscmd in 2017-18 and 523 mscmd in 2018-19. Brock Osweiler Womens Jersey
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