Indian state-held Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), the biggest oil and gas producer in the country, is looking to buy 2.5-3 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy projects, a senior ONGC executive said on Wednesday.  

Currently, ONGC has around 2.5 GW of renewable energy capacity in its portfolio, Executive Director Satyan Kumar told reporters, as carried by Reuters.

ONGC also plans to import 3 million tons of LNG per year under long-term agreements. Some of these contracts could be finalized within a year, according to Kumar.

Earlier this year, a top ONGC executive said that the company plans to invest as much as $11.5 billion (1 trillion Indian rupees) in clean energy by 2030.

ONGC, the biggest oil and gas explorer and the company producing about 70% of all of India’s oil and gas, plans to have a portfolio of renewable energy of 10 GW by 2030, ONGC’s director of finance, Vivek Chandrakant Tongaonkar, told Bloomberg in February.

Investments in green energy for the current fiscal year are planned at $115 million (10 billion rupees). So the 2030 target would mean scaling up these investments 100 times over.

ONGC plans to invest in renewable and low-carbon energy, including solar, wind, hydropower, biogas, green hydrogen, and green ammonia projects by the end of the decade.

The Indian state-held oil and gas major will fund the massive expansion of its new energy business with cash flows from its oil and gas operations and with new debt issuance, the finance director Chandrakant told Bloomberg in an interview earlier this year.

ONGC has already started entering into partnerships to boost its presence in the clean energy sector. 

ONGC’s push into renewables comes just as the biggest European oil and gas majors are scaling back their commitments and targets in the clean energy sectors and are scrapping biofuels and other green energy projects.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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