The Ministry of Petroleum of India forecast a total investment of US$20bn in gas fields in the next five to seven years, to double gas consumption. A large part of these investments will be focused on the development of gas discoveries made by state-owned ONGC and by the joint venture of Reliance Industries and BP off the east coast. In June 2016, the Ministry announced that the Krishna-Godavari basin would become the hub of oil and gas reserves in the next 5 to 7 years, attracting Rs 1,000 bn (US$15bn) of new investments.
ONGC plans to invest US$5.1bn to produce more than 16 mcm/d from its Krishna Godavari basin KG-DWN-98/2 block. The BP-Reliance joint venture has several discoveries in the adjacent KG-DWN- 98/3 or KG-D6 block and NEC-25 off the Odisha coast.
Investments will also be directed to the development of gas infrastructures, such as pipelines, city gas networks and LNG import terminals. Up to 34 Mt/year of regasification capacity and around 30,000 km of gas pipelines may be added in the next five years, doubling the length of the existing grid. India will also continue developing gas interconnections, such as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline or a 1,300 km-long undersea gas pipeline between Iran and India.