India To Expand Natural Gas Pipeline By 10,805 KM, Ethanol Blending To Reach 20% By FY 2025

Aimed at ensuring uniform availability of natural gas across regions, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas announced the expansion of the natural gas pipeline by 10.805km. This will add to the current length of 24,945km.

Along with natural gas pipeline expansion, the country commits to achieving 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2025, under the Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme.

The program to achieve ethanol-blended petrol has saved foreign exchange of 1.08 lakh crore rupees over the last decade, registering a reduction of 557 lakh metric tonnes in CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it helped in the facilitation of 92,400 crore rupees payments to farmers.

Notably, as of December 2024, India has achieved slight growth in ethanol blending to 16.23% from 14.60% in the previous year.

Moreover, 72 compressed bio-gas(CBG) plants- of a total of 80 commissioned plants under the SATAT initiative- are under construction.
It will become mandatory to blend compressed bio-gas (CBG) in CNG and PNG segments from financial year 2025-26. In the start, the blending will stand at 1% gradually reaching 5% by FY 2028-29.

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The ministry announced that public sector oil marketing companies have installed 17,939 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and 206 battery-swapping stations at retail outlets across the country as of December 2024.

It is anticipated that Projects at 11 PSU refineries and new greenfield refineries will stimulate India’s refining capacity to 309.5 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) by 2028 from 256.8 MMTPA currently.

Domestic gas production has increased from 34.45 billion cubic meters (BCM) in FY 2022-23 to 36.44 BCM in FY 2023-24.

The Ministry also revealed 13 hydrocarbon discoveries under the Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) and 12 discoveries under nomination and contractual regimes during FY 2023-24.

The government’s unified pipeline tariff, introduced in July 2024, sets a levelized tariff of ₹80.97/MMBTU, aimed at creating a “One Nation, One Grid, One Tariff” system.
The ministry commits to reducing import dependency by increasing domestic production, renewable energy integration, and energy efficiency.
In FY 2024-25, 5.7 lakh rupees worth of oil and gas projects are under implementation.