VIEW Column: As oil tops $100, India needs a wider, smarter fuel security strategy

Oil prices are flaring up, yet again. Brent Oil futures are now quoting at over $100 per barrel. The way ahead in the energy economy, clearly, is to diversify and derisk supplies, innovate in the policy domain, and concurrently, step-up usage of alternate fuels, fine-tune standards and proactively boost sustainability and environmental norms going forward.

Given the ground reality, it would seem sensible to shore up supply of fuel alternatives. Already, the Centre is reportedly urging the autoindustry to put out timelines for the rollout of flexi-fuel vehicles, those that require at least 85% blending of biofuel ethanol produced locally. The availability of 20% ethanol blended petrol (EBP), produced from maize, surplus sugarcane and damaged grains, is now par for the course.

But we surely need to better leverage our vast output of agricultural residue, such as paddy straw, bagasse, and municipal bio-waste, to gainfully and sustainably increase the production of ethanol, the alcohol whose molecule has two carbon atoms. The plan should be to ring-fence the food economy even as we rev up output of biofuels.


It is true that 20% EBP marginally reduces vehicular mileage, but there are significant reductions in particulate matter and other exhaust emissions as the embedded oxygen in ethanol does bring about more complete combustion of fuel. Given the volumes involved, EBP does bring down imports of crude.

However, the most used petroleum product, by far, is high-speed diesel, and there’s much scope to explore its blending with biofuel iso-butanol, the alcohol molecule with four carbon atoms. The idea ought to be to fast-forward the microbial synthesis of cellulosic iso-butanol, to reduce the carbon footprint in transport.

Already, reports say that pilot studies for 2% blending of diesel with iso-butanol have been firmed up. But when it comes to crop residue, plant cell walls are difficult to break down, and do require added enzymes, chemicals and energy inputs to effectively release fermentable sugars for blending. Hence, the pressing need for brownfield expansion of existing biorefineries to produce bioiso-butanol using specialized biocatalysts and innovative technological solutions. It can well lead to such products as renewable diesel and sustainable aviation turbine fuel.

The second-generation biorefineries are also essential to step-up supplies of compressed biogas (CBG) at a commercial scale, using agricultural residue, organic matter, and municipal waste. A NITI report earlier this year did underline the huge potential of CBG, as a sustainable substitute for natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG).

In tandem, we do need to duly leverage carbon emissions to efficiently produce fuel substitute methanol, whose molecular structure has a single carbon atom. Note that power generation major NTPC’s Vindhyachal power plant has successfully produced high purity methanol as a byproduct. Now methanol and diesel are immiscible, given different molecular structures, which the mavens label as polarity differences. But in high consumption dual fuel systems, say in marine engines and those for heavy-duty transport, methanol can be injected into the air intake, while diesel is piped directly into the combustion cylinder to act as an igniter.

The process is known to avoid physical blending of methanol, while substituting up to 50-70% diesel in marine and heavy-duty engines. Further, we do need to explore the possibility of using dimethyl ether (DME), which is a chemical derivative of methanol, for blending with liquified petroleum gas (LPG) or cooking gas. The physical and thermodynamic properties of DME are said to closely resemble those of propane and butane, which constitute LPG.

Besides, in dense urban centres like Delhi National Capital Territory we do need to speedily traverse to zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs) in the domain of policy making, to purposefully improve the air quality index. The game plan is to induct 14,000 EV buses in Delhi, and phase-out the registration of non-EVs sooner rather than later. However, it cannot be gainsaid that EVs are also metal-mining and processing intensive, and bringing the EVs supply chains here may well increase the carbon-footprint domestically, pending breakthroughs, in EV battery technology that use, say, innovative electronics to reduce the need for rare earths and critical minerals, or forays into entirely new battery chemistry.

The fact of the matter is India is increasingly and overwhelmingly dependent on imports of oil, and in the backdrop of hardening crude prices and rising geopolitical tensions, it is warranted that we increase our strategic crude oil reserves. And upstream oil major ONGC already plans to increase India’s strategic oil reserves by 12.8 million barrels, which would take the total to just under 52 million barrels of crude. In the medium term and well beyond, it would also make sense to better allocate resources for exploration and production of crude oil in our more prospective and under-explored sedimentary basins.