The Minister of State (MoS) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Rameswar Teli in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday informed that the Central Government is making all efforts to reduce crude oil imports.
The Minister stated that the ministry is working in collaboration with various Central Government Ministries to achieve the goal to reduce the dependency on the import of oil and gas. The five-pronged strategy comprises promoting energy efficiency and conservation measures, giving thrust on demand substitution, promoting biofuels and other alternative fuels and renewables, increasing domestic production of oil and gas, and refinery process improvements.
The government has taken several steps to enhance exploration and production of oil and gas in the country among policy for relaxations, extensions, and clarifications under Production Sharing Contract (PSC) regime for early monetization of hydrocarbon discoveries, Policy Framework for Exploration and Exploitation of Unconventional Hydrocarbons under Existing Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) Coal Bed Methane (CBM), Reforms in Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy for enhancing domestic exploration and production of oil and gas, Natural Gas Marketing Reforms, he added.The minister said that the government is also promoting the usage of environment-friendly transportation fuel, that is, CNG by expanding the coverage of the City Gas Distribution (CGD) network in the country. The government has also taken a number of initiatives to encourage the use of alternative fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel through Ethanol Blending in Petrol (EBP) Programme and Bio-diesel blending in diesel,
To promote the use of compressed biogas, the government has launched a Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation and has also formulated the National Bio-Fuel Policy 2018 to boost the availability of biofuels in the country, he further stated.
( With inputs from ANI )
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