Assam has untapped natural gas reserves worth Rs 3.53 Lakh Crores, highest in India

Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Rameswar Teli, while responding to a question raised by West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress leader Mausum Noor in the Lok Sabha on 25th July, with regards to the total natural gas reserves in the country, said that, India has 1141.3 billion cubic metres of untapped natural gas reserves as on April 1, 2021. 

Additionally, Minister Rameswar Teli also mentions that Assam has the highest reserves of natural gas in the entire country of 144.3 billion cubic metres, with their market value reported at Rs 3.52 lakh crores. 

Surprisingly, on submission of the data in response to TMC MP Mausum Noor’s questions, Teli adds that Assam alone constitutes 40 percent of the total reserves of natural gas in the entire country. While the shares of natural gas reserves in other parts of Northeast are as follows:

1)    Arunachal Pradesh – 3.1 billion cubic metres

2)    Tripura – 22.2 billion cubic metres

3)    Nagaland – 0

On the other hand, the country’s off-shore share of natural gas reserves constitute a whopping 743.1 billion cubic metres of which the Eastern Offshore has 514.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas reserves and Western Offshore has 228.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas reserves.

Answering to TMC MP Noor’s question whether the government has made any efforts for more production from the gas reserves in the country, Teli responds that as per the Natural Gas Reforms (2014-2021), the government has introduced marketing including pricing freedom with a price ceiling for gas production form difficult areas such as High Pressure – High Temperature (HP-HT) and deepwater areas in the year 2016. 

In the consecutive year, the government introduced the marketing and pricing freedom for Coal Bed Methane. The latest reforms announced by the government with respect to the natural gas pricing is to discover market price of gas to be sold by gas producers, through a transparent and competitive proves. Detailed guidelines for discovery of market price for domestically produced natural gas through e-bidding issued vide notification date December 3, 2020.

In 2014, the central government accorded the highest priority of domestic gas supply to City Gas Distribution (CGD) sector of Piped Natural Gas (PNG).