Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced a major energy mission on the occasion of Independence Day. He said that India is now launching the ‘National Deep Water Exploration Mission’, which aims to discover the reserves of oil and gas hidden under the sea. According to PTI news, this initiative will promote domestic production and reduce dependence on oil-gas imports. India imports 88% of its needs and about 50% of natural gas. It spends a large amount of foreign currency. PM Modi said that lakhs of crores of rupees are spent on the import of petrol-diesel and gas. If we were self -sufficient, then this money could have been spent in the development of farmers, poor and villages.
New ‘sea churning’ in energy sector
Describing it as a ‘sea churning of new India’, the Prime Minister said that now India will discover oil and gas in the depths of the sea in mission mode. This will help the country to increase energy towards self -sufficiency. Oil and gas search policy was changed during the tenure of the Modi government, which is called Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP). Under this, a large number of new areas were handed over to private and public companies for search.
What did oil minister Hardeep Puri tell
Oil Minister Hardeep Puri said that after 2014, there have been 172 new discoveries so far. 66 of these discoveries are in offshore areas. 4 times more area (0.38 million sq km) compared to 2009-14 is now given for exploration. The government has recently opened up the ‘no-go’ areas of about 1 million sq km for exploration. The Andaman-Nicobar Basin, whose geological texture is found from oil-rich areas such as Myanmar and North Sumatra, is considered to be a high-patanical zone. The ministry said that Andaman could become the next hotspot of India. If the discovery here is successful, it will reduce imports, increase employment and strengthen India’s energy security.
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