India Teams up with Japan, South Korea on LNG
India plans to form an alliance with Japan and South Korea to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) at "reasonable prices", the country's oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.
India may soon rope China into the alliance as well, he said.
A Reuter report quoted Dharmendra as saying: "For the next two to three decades, gas is going to be a major part of the energy basket for Asian energy consumers. We want to bring together the countries and form a network which can together source reasonable, rational and affordable LNG"
State-owned GAIL Ltd is spearheading the talks, which follow a similar attempt in 2013, on India's behalf.
Natural gas currently accounts for about 8 percent of India's overall energy mix. In the last decade, while India's domestic natural gas production has grown by 10 percent, imports of LNG have risen by 335 percent.