Category: South Asia

India’s dependence on imported fossil fuels rose to 38% in 2012, despite the country having significant domestic fossil fuel resources. India ranked as the fourth-largest energy consumer in the world in 2011, following China, the United States, and Russia. The country’s energy demand continues to climb as a result of its dynamic economic growth and modernization. India is the third-largest economy on a purchasing power parity basis and has the world’s second-largest population, according to World Bank data. As India modernizes and the population moves to urban areas, the country has shifted from using traditional biomass and waste to relying on other energy sources, including fossil fuels. India’s newly elected government, with the Bharatiya Janat Party as the majority party, faces challenges to meet the country’s growing energy demand, to secure affordable energy supplies, and to attract investment for domestic hydrocarbon production and infrastructure development. Petroleum and other liquids. […]

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India’s reliance on domestic coal has left many of its power stations starved for fuel, forcing electricity cuts throughout the country, even as the price of coal imports slumps. Despite having the world’s third-largest coal reserves, according to the International Energy Agency, a quarter of India’s 100 coal-fired power stations are short of supply with stocks of less than four days, and some hanging onto even lower stockpiles, official and trade data showed. A prolonged summer and below-normal monsoon rains have exacerbated the situation by raising electricity demand. At the same time, global coal prices have fallen to their lowest levels in years, with ANZ predicting in a report last week that prices will drop 10% more over the next two to three years as China slows spending. […]

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Armed bandits are threatening villagers with death unless they deliver 35 buckets of water each day in northern India, where water is scarce thanks to an ongoing drought and a poor supply. So far, 28 villages have been obeying the order, taking turns to deliver what the bandits are calling a daily "water tax," police said. "Water itself is very scarce in this region. Villagers can hardly meet their demand," officer Suresh Kumar Singh said by telephone from Banda, a city on the southern border of central Uttar Pradesh state and caught within what is known in India as bandit country. Though the number of bandits has declined drastically in recent decades, India’s bandit tradition, which began more than 800 years ago when emperors still ruled, has continued in the hard-to-reach forests and mountains of the Bundelkhand region. The area is cut off from supply […]

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India’s biggest power company said coal shortages at six of its power stations are threatening to disrupt electricity generation in 22 of the country’s states and territories. In a letter to India’s Power Ministry on Monday, Arup Roy Choudhury , chairman of NTPC Ltd. said the generating stations had coal supplies sufficient for two days or less of power production. Mr. Choudury’s letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, didn’t say why coal was running low. Coal shortages–mainly because of failures by the state-run coal monopoly to deliver adequate supplies–are a major cause of power outages in India, where more than half of electricity-generation capacity depends on coal. Power supplies are especially strained now, with hot summer temperatures pushing up demand and below-normal monsoon rainfall denting generation by hydroelectric plants. According to government data, as many as 46 of India’s 100 coal-fired power stations have coal stocks of […]

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India’s finance minister said the country needs to double its existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure to diversify the national energy sector. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government aims to add another 9,300 miles to the existing network of about 9,300 miles of pipeline crisscrossing the country. "This will help increase the usage of gas, domestic as well as imported, which in the long-term will be beneficial in reducing dependence on any one energy source," he said Thursday. The government in April said it expected natural gas demand to more than double by the beginning of the next decade. According to the terms of a five-year energy plan , the Indian government has said it wants to add at least one transnational pipeline to the midstream sector from either Iran, Oman or Central Asia. The minister said the pipeline expansions could come through a mix of public- and private-sector […]

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Employees worked on a 132kv overhead electricity line along the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Fuel and power companies want India ’s new government to use this week’s budget to prove it is ready to start dismantling the system of government pricing and subsidies which has hobbled the energy industry. India’s convoluted system of taxes and fuel subsidies not only cost the country tens of billions of dollars every year, but it also discourages and delays expansion in the companies that provide fuel and power to the public. Oil and gas retailers and exploration companies are hoping the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will use the momentum following a landslide victory in May elections to deregulate the price of diesel fuel and push through other unpopular policy changes.  With companies often forced to sell at a loss, there are few incentives to explore […]

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