Amidst COVID 2019 pandemic, Natural gas prices in India are cut by a steep 25% beginning April, in line with the slump in global rates leading to INR 3000 crores revenue hit for giant ONGC
Stalling of manufacturing industry during the lockdown has put the economy on hold due to rise of pandemic COVID-19 in the country. Consequently, the demand for natural gas has fallen down and is expected to fall by 15-20% in Q2 2020. This shall lead to steep fall in the price of domestic natural gas price due to fall in demand. Statistically, the domestic natural gas prices fell by 50% from USD 3.36 per MMBTU to USD 2.39 per MMBTU April 2020 onwards. Hence, State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) will lose about INR 3,000 crore in revenue and start loosing out the working capital in next quarter. However, In early 2022, there were many bullish signs coming out of India. In January, the Government authorized $774 million to support a gas pipeline project in the northeast, anew LNG pipeline commissioned in Gujarat and another planned import facility, a floating storage unit, received a boost. At a time when demand in China was weakening due to COVID-19, there was a real sense that Indian buyers could step up and fill the void.
