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Mumbai: India’s energy consumption increased by 7.1% in 2014, reaching an all-time high and accounting for 34.7% of the global consumption increment in 2014, said British oil and gas giant BP Plc. in its review of world energy consumption in 2014.
The note by BP, called as the BP Statistical Review 2014, said India’s domestic energy consumption reached an all-time high in 2014 with the year seeing the fastest growth for the last five years. This was mainly driven by the country’s coal consumption which increased by 11.1% contributing over half of the total energy needs of the company.
In fact, the country’s coal consumption was the largest in the world in 2014 and India was the third largest coal market in the world.
“India’s coal production reached a record high of 644 million tonnes. Output grew by 38.9 million tonnes in 2014, the largest increase in the world and in the country’s history,” said BP’s note.
The coal production and consumption is expected to increase even further in the current year with the government streamlining the coal access and use policy through two rounds of bidding for coal blocks in April and May.
Last year, the Supreme Court had cancelled close to 200 coal blocks on allegations of illegal and improper mining.
The BP’s statistical review report, however, said while coal consumption grew the fastest, India’s demand for gas slowed in spite of an increase in LNG imports by almost 6.7%.
This was mainly due to a fall in diesel, petrol and kerosene prices last year due to a near 48% drop in crude price, said an analyst with a domestic brokerage.
He said the fall in natural gas consumption was mainly due to the cheaper availability of alternate fuels.
BP, in its review said, natural gas production too declined for the third consecutive year, and remains 20.3% below the 2011 peak.
However, the oil ministry is bullish on India’s natural gas production growth and expects it to grow by over 50% in the next three years, outstripping the growth in demand from power and fertilizer firms during the same period.
India currently produces close to 138.33 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) as on 2014-15 end. This is against a growth in demand of 27% from the core natural gas consuming sectors—power and fertilizer, according to Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), an oil ministry’s statistical body.
The BP review said that despite a fall in production in natural gas, India’s energy production grew by 4%, its highest growth rate in five years.
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