An Iranian ballistic missile strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan hydrocarbons complex, on 19 March, sent shivers across the world, since Qatar supplies a fifth of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG). The consternation was particularly dire in India since 40 per cent of our LNG is sourced from Qatar.

With the complex shut down indefinitely pending cessation of hostilities and the Strait of Hormuz presently closed to most shipping, this may seem like a fatal dependency by India on Qatari gas. It is, but only in the very short term because, historical import data shows that Indian dependency was far greater a decade ago; and, that from 2014 onwards, the present India government initiated a well-crafted strategy to wean India off Qatari gas. It is a lesson about how foresight can often be tested by vicissitudes of both geopolitical and natural hues.

Between 2010 and 2014, when India had started ramping up sizeable volumes of LNG imports, 80 to 90 per cent of it came from Qatar. What seized the government of the day to put all its eggs in one basket, located in one of the most volatile places on earth is a question for another day. Perhaps those considerations were more, shall we say, ‘commercial’ rather than strategic. Whatever the reasons, it reflected a time when we had yet to learn to leverage the size of our market to secure our interests.

But from 2014, as a chart below shows, a firm decision was taken to diversify our LNG imports, and to reduce our dependency on Qatar.

In 2014, when Narendra Modi was first sworn in as Prime Minister of India, imports of LNG from Qatar constituted 86 per cent of the total. The very next year, this figure fell to 62 per cent. Within a year, India had diversified its LNG sourcing, primarily to four countries in order of volume: Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Australia, and Oman.

Source: Swarajya 

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