JAIPUR: The Indian petroleum industry is on the verge of great potential and will be able to supply 25% of the country's crude oil needs by 2030, Union Petroleum and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.

Currently, 5 million barrels of petroleum are being consumed in Iindia every day and it is also increasing by three percent, which is higher than the global average of nearly one percent, Puri said.

At the three-day South Asian Geoscience Conference, GeoIndia 2022, which got underway at JECC, Sitapura in Rajasthan's Jaipur on Friday, the Union Minister revealed this to the media. The Minister also gave the lifetime achievement award to veteran geologist Shyam Vyas Rao, a former Director (Exploration) of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), during the opening session.

In nine years, the amount of ethanol in gasoline rose to 10%. The Minister said during the opening session that the amount of ethanol blend in gasoline climbed from 0.67 percent in 2013 to 10 percent in May 2022, or five months earlier than expected.

Environmentally beneficial, it is cutting CO2 emissions by 2.7 million tonnes. According to projections by the International Energy Agency, India will account for 25% of the increase in world energy consumption over the next twenty years.

Pankaj Jain, the petroleum secretary, advised the geology specialists to take advantage of this chance to increase their contribution in light of the growing need for and lack of energy sources. He urged the geoscientific community to provide specialised expertise for deep, ultra-deep, and onshore waters in order to increase oil and gas production in a way that is environmentally sustainable.

Earlier, Rajesh Kumar Srivastava, CMD of ONGC and Chief Patron of APG, welcomed the dignitaries and attendees "In the past 14 years, GeoIndia has played a significant leadership role under the auspices of the Association of Petroleum Geologists (APG) India. The extent and level of foreign involvement in the biennial South Asian Geology Conference and Exhibition have changed. By 2030, it is expected that the value of automation technology used in the oil and gas industry would have nearly doubled to $42 billion. It is past due for the oil and gas industry to benefit from the digital transformation." Experts and decision-makers attended the plenary session on the first day of the conference, which was moderated by energy affairs specialist Narendra Taneja. Participants included Invest India's Ravneet Mann, ExxonMobil MD Justin Murphy, Equinor MD Desikan Sundararajan, Md. El-Toukhy, and Pankaj Jain, Secretary, MoPNG.

The Minister also opened the GeoIndia 2022 exhibition, where a number of Indian and international oil and gas service providers and enterprises displayed their cutting-edge products and methods for finding and producing oil and gas.

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