India's April Gas Output Up 5% on Year
India’s gross production of natural gas for the month of April was 2.66bn m3, up 5.1% year on year, according to latest data published by Indian oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).
State-owned ONGC was the biggest producer followed by Oil India. ONGC's output in April was up 10% year on year to 1.97bn m3 while Oil India produced 221mn m3 of gas, down more than 8% compared with same month last year.
Natural gas available for sale (net domestic production plus regasified LNG) for the month was 4.39bn m3, an increase of 5.6% over the corresponding month of the previous year. India’s LNG imports in April were 2.28bn m3, up 4.5% year on year. Major importers of LNG were Petronet LNG, Gail, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, Reliance Industries, Torrent Power Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
Total consumption for the month was 4.41bn m3. Gas producing companies use some quantity of gas for their own use as internal consumption while some quantity of gas is flared as a part of technical requirement. After flare, loss and internal consumption by gas producing companies, the net production for sale of gas to consuming sectors like power, fertilizer, city gas distribution (CGD), refinery and petrochemicals was approximately 79.4% of the gross production during April 2018. Major consumers were fertilizer (27%), power (24%), city gas distribution (17%), refinery (14%) and petrochemicals (6%). Regasified imported LNG accounted for 51.2% of total gas consumption in the country in April, the data showed.