Fourteen years ago, in 1996, Dr Vijay Kelkar, one of my distinguished predecessors in the long list of luminaries who have delivered this Lecture, said, “What petroleum was to the 20th century, natural gas will be to the 21st.” Instead of making this profound observation the drumbeat of our march to Energy Security, we have so twisted and mangled natural gas policy, both with respect to internal production and distribution, and with respect to imports by pipeline and as Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from abroad, that we are today more energy insecure than we were when Dr. Kelkar mounted this podium.
This Lecture is, therefore, a kind of red alert being sounded because the Integrated Energy Policy, first circulated as a draft in 2004, then submitted at leisure to Government two years later in 2006, and finally endorsed by Government a further two years later, in December 2008, is yet, another two years later, in 2010, gathering dust as a mere academic exercise, with little or no action by any of the numerous Ministries concerned nor any integration in energy policy on the ground. It shows that waking up the Indian establishment to the imperative of Energy Security is tantamount to teaching an “Elephant to Dance”.
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