The world’s third-largest consumer of crude oil and fifth-largest economy – India – won’t panic and “will manage” economically should prices rally past $100 per barrel, according to the country’s energy minister.
Speaking at energy conference ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday (October 3, 2023), Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, noted: “India is a large economy. It has a lot of domestic production. We’ll cut back or we’ll do something or the other. But I would worry about what happens to other parts of the developing world.”
The minister cautioned that crude prices above $100 per barrel levels were neither in the interest of consumers nor producers, and may cause lower economic growth and “recessionary” headwinds for many economies.
Puri’s remarks come at a time when the oil industry has bounced back from negative oil prices seen at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Both the global proxy crude oil benchmark Brent as well as the West Texas Intermediate are just shy of their 12-month highs at around $91 and $89 per barrel respectively.
However, the Minister also suggested that the current cyclical upswing in crude prices may also provide a spur for a green transition in India and beyond. For its part, India aims to generate 500GW of power by 2030 from renewable sources.
Dismissing hydrogen market naysayers, Puri predicted a bright future for green hydrogen in India given the size of its internal market. “You need to have a situation where there is demand, where there is production and there is consumption. We have a situation where the transitioning to green energy is taking place at a pace faster than what we had anticipated.”
According to Indian government projections, the country’s National Green Hydrogen Mission aims to produce 5 million tons of the stuff annually by 2030.
Earlier in the day, Puri inaugurated India’s large national pavilion at ADIPEC – symbolic of its ties to the Middle East in general and the UAE in particular, in terms of servicing its energy needs. Separately, newswire Reuters reported that the Indian Minister also held talks with OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais on the sidelines of ADIPEC, and admitted having discussed the currently high oil prices.
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