India's domestic oil and gas production is full of challenges

As an international petrochemical powerhouse, India imports about 84% of its oil
.
Recently, in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the cost of imported oil for India has inevitably risen
.
To this end, India, like other Asia-Pacific countries, is actively developing its own oil and gas resources and has seen some results
.
However, limited by multiple factors, India's domestic oil and gas production is still a challenge
.

Since the beginning of this year, affected by the rise in international oil prices, the cost of India's crude oil imports has risen
repeatedly.
In the past fiscal year 2021~2022, India's total crude oil import expenditure reached US$119 billion, more than
double the previous fiscal year.
In March, India's monthly crude oil import bill reached $13.
7 billion, accounting for more than 10%
of the total crude oil import bill for the fiscal year.
In order to strengthen its own energy security, India has continuously promoted local oil and gas production
.
In addition to actively promoting the bidding of oil and gas projects, since the beginning of this year, India's energy sector has appropriately relaxed the operating restrictions of oil and gas producers to further attract external investment
.
Indian oil industry officials said that India's domestic oil and gas production is expected to increase by nearly 10% in the next few years
.

However, the author believes that although India continues to increase its local oil and gas development, it will take a long time to produce large-scale crude oil and truly alleviate the shortage of local energy use
.
The most obvious contradiction is that it is too late
for India to step up its tenders.
After a foreign company wins the bid, it also needs to start from the exploration of oil and gas resources, go through the complete investment decision process, and then exploit the oil and gas resources, which requires an extremely long cycle
.
For India's booming petrochemical industry, such a far water cannot quench the near thirst
.
In addition, India's tender approval process is longer than in other countries, which hinders
India's increase in indigenous oil and gas development.
In July, India issued a round of tenders for oil and gas blocks, but to date India's upstream oil and gas development regulator has not announced the final winner.

In addition, the Indian oil industry also acknowledges that India also has challenges
in the technical aspects of oil exploration and extraction.
Industry insiders in the country have been calling for India to adopt newer industry technologies and improve oil and gas recovery efficiency if it wants to significantly increase its local oil and gas production, while also ensuring that a large number of private companies enter the industry and bring more resources
to the development of the industry.
However, from the current situation, India's indigenous oil exploitation is still underdeveloped
.