As our nation marks the onset of our 80th Independence Day, we confront the challenges of increased vulnerability and the risk of dependence on external sources due to geopolitical tensions. Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi warns the country of the emerging challenge of strengthening domestic capacity in critical areas, including energy and minerals. The newly emerging geopolitical strategy of weaponising energy and other critical minerals, including technology, has posed a serious concern for the nation’s overall security. Shaping the geopolitical dynamics and strategising warfare through energy, technology and resources has become the new normal. Consequently, geopolitical tensions and vulnerabilities have highlighted the imperative of achieving energy self-reliance and reinforced the need for greater self-sufficiency in critical minerals and indigenous technology.
Atmanirbharta: Foundation of Viksit Bharat
Energy security is the backbone of a developing nation. However, the current global landscape has created unprecedented energy vulnerabilities through geopolitical strategy and warfare. Atmanirbharta has been a critical foundation of Viksit Bharat. Atmanirbharta is an aspiration that enhances our capabilities, making India a Sashakt Bharat. As a result, the time has come to strategically connect Atmanirbharta and energy security. Energy independence will also strengthen other aspects of security, such as defence, food, and economic security, and empower the nation with overall self-sufficiency, leading to Sashakt Bharat.
Bharat’s Energy Dependency
The vulnerability of India’s oil supply was perhaps highlighted by the Hormuz crisis three months ago, but the import dependency has persisted for 50 years. While importing oil to add value and export it to Europe is considered good business, simply consuming 87 per cent to 88 per cent of the oil India imports is detrimental and heavily inflates the trade deficit. India’s petroleum energy requirement accounts for over 234 million metric tons annually. Of which diesel constitutes around 38 per cent of the petroleum products used in road transport, commercial vehicles and agriculture. Petrol accounts for 16 per cent consumed by the transport sector, mainly cars and two-wheelers. Liquefied Petroleum Gas LPG accounts for 13 per cent, predominantly used by domestic households and commercial cooking, and Petroleum coke accounts for around 9 per cent, primarily used in cement and industrial manufacturing. Naphtha accounts for 6 per cent, required by petrochemicals and fertilisers, while Bitumen accounts for 4 per cent, used for road construction and infrastructure. Aviation turbine fuel amounts to 3 per cent while fuel oil used for shipping and industrial boilers accounts for 3 per cent.
India’s Natural Gas requirement accounts for around 6.7 per cent of India’s total primary energy basket. Of the total natural gas requirement, around 30 per cent is required for fertilisers, about 20 per cent is used for gas distribution and road transport, including Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for vehicles and Piped Natural Gas (PNG) for households. Around 17 per cent of natural gas is used to run gas-based power plants, 11 per cent in petroleum refineries, and 22 per cent for petrochemicals and other uses.
Fallout of Global Conflict
India depends on West Asia for nearly 60 to 65 per cent of its crude oil and a third, around 39 per cent, of its LNG. Owing to the present global conflict, India’s energy security is at severe threat. India is an energy-dependent nation. Around Rs. 3,202.2 crore to Rs. 3,774.2 crores per day is the amount spent on hydrocarbon imports to meet our essential demand for energy. India imports around 0.671 MMT (million metric tonnes) of crude oil every day and spends Rs. 2,630.2 crores to Rs. 3,019.3 crores to meet its daily crude oil requirement.
India has been energy-dependent to a great extent, importing nearly 90 per cent of its crude oil requirements and about half of its natural gas needs. However, recent times have demonstrated that it is time to comprehend the need to become energy self-reliant for achieving energy security. To become energy-independent, India is also launching the National Deep Water Exploration Mission to explore underwater oil and gas reserves. Furthermore, we have launched the National Critical Mineral Mission, with exploration campaigns running in more than 1200 locations to become self-reliant in critical minerals. Our honourable Prime Minister emphasised the strategic need for achieving self-reliance in energy, highlighting the significance of exploration to tap the underexplored offshore reserves for attaining energy security.
Approximately Rs. 84,084 crores have been approved under the scheme “ Samudra Manthan National Offshore Exploration Scheme”. The scheme aims at accelerating the exploration for oil and natural gas in deep water and in the ultra-deep water areas over the next five years. The programme will comprehensively include seismic surveys, exploration drilling and shared offshore infrastructure. The purpose of the government will remain to attract more and more investment in exploring the energy beds and resources, as well as technology into India’s offshore basins. Further, approximately 99 per cent of India’s sedimentary basins for oil and gas exploration and production have been opened by the government, which earlier were off-limits to commercial exploration. These initiatives are largely aligned towards unlocking the domestic potential of hydrocarbon resources to save our country from energy price vulnerability as well as supply shocks.
There have been several achievements of the government in the context of expansion of piped cooking gas coverage from 70 cities to 700 cities, an alternative to LPG, which caters to the energy supply to approximately 1.75 crore households as compared to 22 lakh households in 2014. However, this alternative to LPG is largely imported from West Asia, costing lakhs of crores of rupees. It is essential to make the country self-reliant in energy. In 2024-25, crude oil imports were valued at about $137 billion, while petroleum products were valued at $24 billion and LNG imports were worth $15 billion, respectively. The huge import bill and energy price fluctuations further add to energy vulnerability, as demonstrated by the current West Asia crisis. Against this backdrop, energy diversification serves as a critical pathway for achieving energy security. Relying on a single energy source to fulfil our needs exacerbates the energy vulnerability to various risks. Moreover, the energy transition to different non-conventional energy sources, mainly renewable and clean energy sources, is not only economically viable but also the need of the hour. There prevails a region-wise diversity in natural resource endowment. Therefore, the most efficient method of energy transition from oil and natural gas would be a decentralised pathway of energy transition.
Energy Diversification
Over the period of eleven years, solar energy has increased 30 times, and we are building new dams for hydro expansion. India is investing thousands of crores in the Green Hydrogen mission and taking big initiatives in nuclear energy, with 10 new nuclear reactors being built fast. We aim to increase nuclear energy capacity by more than 10 times by 2047. We had decided to reach 50% clean energy in India by 2030, but we achieved this target in 2025, 5 years early.
Biogas and Agriculture
Bharat is an agro-based economy, and most of our citizens rely on agriculture for their living. India is predominantly self-sufficient in staple food grains such as wheat and rice, but remains highly import -dependent on specific commodities. Approximately 50 to 60 per cent of the total domestic requirement and about 15 to 20 per cent of the pulse requirement is met through imports. India is one of the world’s largest importers of cooking oils, and food imports account for about 5 per cent of India’s total merchandise imports.
Agriculture and biogas have a strong connection with each other. The agricultural waste can be converted to clean energy, reducing the energy dependency on hydrocarbons such as oil and natural gas imported from other countries. Crop residues such as rice straw, wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, animal dung, food and organic waste, etc., can be converted into biogas, biofuels, organic manure and electricity and heat. This not only empowers self-sufficiency, having several co-benefits and socio-economic impact, but also serves as a remarkable example of the circular economy. The biogas thus produced can serve as a substitute for oil imports, reducing energy costs and foreign exchange burden. Biogas production provides a decentralised rural energy system, which is a participatory and consensus-based community model. The manure that is generated through biogas plants improves soil fertility, reduces chemical fertiliser dependency and lowers production costs. Reduced stubble burning and reduced emissions are some of the environmental benefits.
Energy Atmanirbharta is the pursuit of the hour for building an energy-secure, resilient and self-reliant economy amid geopolitical tensions and supply disruptions. There is an urgent need to reduce energy dependency and imports of hydrocarbons and critical minerals. Achieving energy security entails integrated strategies such as energy diversification, enhancing domestic energy potential by tapping unexplored hydrocarbon energy resources, energy transition to renewable energy, nuclear power, green hydrogen and decentralised energy systems. Such strategies must be visualised through indigenous technology, ensuring self-reliance and resilience.
The integration of agriculture and biogas can further reduce fossil-fuel dependence, improve rural energy access, manage agricultural waste and strengthen the circular economy. Thus, a diversified, technologically capable and decentralised energy ecosystem can reduce external vulnerabilities, strengthen economic and national security, and advance the vision of Viksit Bharat and Sashakt Bharat.
