How Putin Ended Modi’s Cheap Natural Gas Dream

How Putin Ended Modi’s Cheap Natural Gas Dream

International and Arab News

Call it poor judgment or bad luck, but India’s expansion of natural gas coverage to more than 90% of its population couldn’t have come at a worse time. In January, Adani Total Gas Ltd. and others won keenly contested licenses to add new areas to city gas networks; in February, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, billions of dollars in investment are on shaky ground.

After an extraordinary surge last month, European spot prices of natural gas are stabilizing — at three times the average of the past decade. Contracted supplies of liquefied natural gas are cheaper, but with Europe scrambling to secure non-Russian fuel, the discount is shrinking, according to a Bloomberg News report last week. Worse still, it’s unlikely to be a blip: Credit Suisse Group AG predicts that the Russian gas deficit will lead to an annual global LNG shortage of nearly 100 million tons by the middle of the decade.

This isn’t what New Delhi anticipated when it decided to raise the share of natural gas in India’s energy mix to 15% by 2030 from under 7% now, as part of a plan to improve air quality. India had nine of the world’s 10 most polluted