Page 5 - AsianOil Week 21 2021

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the Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin’s deepwater India’s oil production largely comes for older
fields, including Oil and Natural Gas Corp.’s fields that are in natural decline and, while
(ONGC) KG-DWN-98/2 (KGD5), could boost investment in exploration is continuing, devel-
national output from around 78.5 mcm per day opers do not have enough new projects in the
in fiscal year 2020-2021 to 122 mcm per day in pipeline to offset current declines.
2023-2024. The country’s refiners, meanwhile, upped
The brokerage has forecast that RIL and BP their run rates by 35% y/y 19.88mn tonnes
will see their output climb from 11 mcm per day (4.86mn bpd) in April. The sizeable jump
2020-2021 to 38 mcm per day by 2023-2024. in performance is owing to the fact that the
All is not well in terms of crude oil produc- country was in lockdown in the same month
tion, however, with the country posting a 2% y/y of 2020, which curbed both economic activ-
dip in output in April at 2.49mn tonnes (608,000 ity and domestic fuel demand.
barrels per day). The result continues a pro- The ministry’s data showed that state-run down-
longed downtrend in national production that stream facilities operated at 98.35% of capacity last
saw output slide by 5.2% y/y in fiscal year 2020- month, helping to boost the country’s oil product out-
2021 to 30.5mn tonnes (612,500 bpd). put by 31% on the year to 20.9mn tonnes.™

India’s oil, gas imports climb in April

PERFORMANCE INDIA’S oil and gas imports experienced a resur- India relies on foreign supplies of oil to meet
gence in April compared with the same month of more than 80% of demand, while gas imports
2020, owing to the comparative relaxation of the have come to account for more than half of con-
country’s social quarantine measures. sumption. However, a new wave of COVID-19
Crude deliveries climbed by 10.3% year on cases may send the country’s demand into a tem-
year to 18.26mn tonnes (4.46mn barrels per day) porary tailspin in the short term.
in April, according to data from the Petroleum While new daily case numbers have fallen
Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) data. The from a high or more than 400,000 in early May to
PPAC is a division of the Ministry of Petroleum around 250,000 in recent days, there are growing
and Natural Gas. fears that a third wave is inevitable.
Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), The Indian government’s principal scientific
meanwhile, climbed by 45.2% y/y to the equiva- adviser, K VijayRaghavan, told a press conference
lent of 2.66bn cubic metres of piped gas. on May 5 that the country’s high levels of the virus
The bump in demand is the result of the meant “a phase three is inevitable”. The situation has
country’s economic recovery since the imple- prompted state governments to impose their own
mentation of nationwide lockdowns in March lockdowns, with the industrialised state of Tamil
2020 in response to the coronavirus (COVID- Nadu having launched social quarantine measures
19) pandemic. on May 8 that are anticipated to remain in place
The pandemic, coupled with a price spat until at least May 31.
between Russia and Saudi Arabia, saw oil prices Tamil Nadu, one of several states to impose
collapse to multi-year lows in March last year. lockdowns, saw its city gas demand drop by
As such, while oil import volumes climbed by 40-50% by May 11, an Indian gas aggregator
10.3%, the price of the deliveries rose from $3bn told S&P Global Platts at the time. This decline,
in April 2020 to $8.5bn. At the same time, the replicated in other parts of the country, has
cost of the country’s LNG imports climbed to already seen some LNG carriers diverted by gas
$800mn in April from $300mn a year earlier. companies.™

Week 21 27•May•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P5