Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas Seeks to Curb Oil Imports
By Team Indoen
Posted on 19 Sep 2020
Tags: Reporter's Desk
Ministry
of Petroleum & Natural Gas has identified a basket of strategies inter-alia
including primarily increasing domestic production of oil and gas and promoting
biofuels/alternate fuels with a view to achieving a reduction in import of
crude oil. The ministry has stated that during 2019-20, consumption of
petroleum products was 213.7 MMT and percentage of import dependency of oil and
oil equivalent gas was 77.9%.
Currently,
the Central Government levies excise duty on petrol and diesel, whereas state governments
levy VAT/sales tax. Excise duty is levied on a specific basis (fixed amount per
litre) and VAT/sales tax (by most of the states) is levied on an ad-valorem
basis.
The
union government has undertaken several initiatives to encourage the use of
alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel through ethanol blending in
petrol and biodiesel blending in diesel. The government has formulated a
National Bio-Fuel Policy 2018 to increase the availability of biofuels in the
country.
To
provide thrust to ethanol blending programme, oil CPSEs (central public sector
enterprises) are establishing twelve 2G ethanol plants across 11 states in
India.
As
per resolution dated 8th November 2019, regarding authorization to
market transportation fuel, the authorized entities, in addition to
conventional fuels are required to install facilities for marketing at least
one new generation alternate fuels like compressed natural gas (CNG), biofuels,
liquefied natural gas (LNG), electric vehicle charging points etc., at their proposed
retail outlets within three years of operationalization of the said outlet
subject to the entity complying with various other statutory guidelines.
Meanwhile
the Union Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan
informed Lok Sabha that as on 31st August 2020, public sector oil
marketing companies have set up electric charging facilities at 110 retail
outlets and battery swapping stations at 17 retail outlets in the country.
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