India's Energy Infrastructure Doubles in Decade, Validates Forward Planning

In a social media post on the X platform, Puri said India's natural gas pipeline length has nearly doubled from 15,000 km in 2014 to 25,429 km today, with 33,475 km planned, proving "preparation is ahead of demand."

The minister said that "energy planning is tested every day, in real-world conditions," adding 1.58 crore kitchens now receive piped natural gas without the need to book refills, calling it evidence that "planning is working."

"When vehicles access cleaner fuel at 8,428 CNG stations, scaling to 18,336 by 2030, plans are holding the ground," he noted.

Puri added that India's energy systems are built to be ready before pressure peaks and said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, planning is measured by how smoothly daily life runs.

In another post, Puri said he interacted with professionals from various sectors at 'Energy Dialogues' held in Chennai.

The minister discussed India's confident strides in areas of biofuels blending, CBG, urea imports, aviation fuels, gas infrastructure needs, and exploration of critical minerals.

India is poised to become the third largest economy in the world, accounting for more than 35 per cent of the overall increase in global energy demand in the next two decades, he said.

"We are in the midst of unprecedented initiatives to strengthen and expand our energy production and infrastructure along the entire value chain, particularly ramping up our refining capacity, which already ranks as the fourth largest in the world," the minister said.

The government has taken various measures to enhance the availability of natural gas for power generation, which include expansion of the National Gas Grid to connect domestic gas sources as well as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals to power plants.

Further, it introduced a unified tariff, set up LNG Terminals, and allowed the domestic gas producers who have been granted pricing and marketing freedom to sell domestic gas up to 500 million standard cubic metres or 10 per cent of annual production from their contract area, whichever is higher, per year through authorised gas exchanges.

- IANS