Access to oil, systematic clean fuel push key to India's orderly energy transition

India must ensure affordable oil and gas prices domestically by continuing to invest in the sector, while making an orderly transition to clean energy without vilifying fossil fuels, petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.

"The challenge is to make sure transition is done in an orderly manner so that we have access to traditional fuel and making predictable transition to cleaner fuel. Balanced and realistic dialogue is needed and not vilification of fossil fuel," Puri told the India Energy Week Conference in Goa.

According to Puri, the transition to renewable energy needs to be smooth and systematic. "Energy transition is important, but not over affordability. And energy sustainability comes after that," he added.

The International Energy Agency said in a report Feb. 7 that India's role in global oil markets will likely expand substantially over the remainder of the decade, fueled by strong growth in its economy, population and demographics -- making the country the largest source of demand growth.

Puri said the country's recent reforms in the energy sector, including diversification of sources of imports, helped ensure that prices of petrol and diesel in India were lower, even when global rates were shooting up.

Leading Indian CEOs echoed similar views.

"We need to grow all kinds of energies for the needs of India tomorrow. We need to look at the price point of these energies, where the public private partnership can play a very important role," said Vartika Shukla, chairperson and managing director of Engineers India Ltd.

Meanwhile, Arun Kumar Singh, chairman of India's ONGC Ltd., said India needs both conventional energy and renewables for its growing needs. "As a national energy company in India, ONGC has to briskly walk both the ways, conventional and renewables."

Policies could backfire

OPEC secretary general Haitham al-Ghais said that even as energy transition was vital, it can have multiple pathways. "This is how we should look at energy transition. At OPEC we continue to invest, and we need hundreds of billions of investments over the next 20 years."

Ghais also emphasized the need for investment in fossil fuel production. "We need to invest as demand is likely to continue to grow."

Qatar's energy minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said that renewable sources of energy do not completely solve the global energy needs. "It is not responsible to say we do not use fossil fuel. It is like humanity shooting itself in the foot," he added.

According to Vickram Bharrat, Guyana's minister of natural resources, the new hydrocarbon found offshore Guyana was a step towards prosperity.

"The new hydrocarbon find offshore Guyana has made the world notice us. Our policy is very simple. Get hydrocarbons out of the ground as fast as possible and use that to build traditional sectors. The window on oil is closing, not so much for gas," he added.

Guyana is well poised to produce 1.2 million b/d of oil by 2027 as new offshore projects come online and the country develops its hydrocarbons industry in a responsible and sustainable way, Bharrat told the conference.

The country started exploration in 1999, with the first discovery coming in 2015. It moved to first oil in December 2019 and currently produces about 650,000 b/d of oil.