The short version. PNGRB constituted a High-Level Expert Committee in May 2024, chaired by former PNGRB chairperson D K Sarraf, to chart India's gas sector to 2040. Its report, signed in August 2025, synthesises five separate demand forecasts rather than modelling its own, and lands on a base case of 260–300 MMSCMD of demand by 2030 and 365–500 MMSCMD by 2040 — rising to 630–700 MMSCMD by 2040 only if India implements a long list of reforms the report itself proposes. A 2013 industry report to the same regulator had projected 746 MMSCMD by 2029-30 as its base case. The 2025 committee's report never mentions that number. The report also carries a formal dissent from GAIL's chairman and managing director, and the committee's own published response says plainly that some of his objections concern "business of GAIL."

260–300 MMSCMD2030 demand, base case (five-source synthesis)

365–700 MMSCMD2040 demand range: base case to full-reform "accelerated" case

~50%Share of current demand met by domestic production

$39.73 bnInvestment the report says completing the gas grid to 2040 would need

The committee, and what it didn't do

PNGRB constituted the High-Level Expert Committee on 3 May 2024, chaired by Shri D K Sarraf (former PNGRB chairperson and former CMD of ONGC), with members Shri Gurdeep Singh (CMD, NTPC), Shri Sandeep Kumar Gupta (CMD, GAIL), Shri Manoj Jain (Managing Director, Torrent Gas), Dr A K Balyan (former MD, Petronet LNG), and Shri Suresh P Manglani (Executive Director & CEO, Adani Total Gas), with ICF Consulting India as knowledge partner. Its terms of reference asked it to develop demand and supply scenarios to 2040, assess pricing and taxation across the gas value chain, and recommend measures to raise gas's share of India's energy mix to the government's own target of 15% by 2030, from roughly 6% today. The Chairman signed the report on 4 August 2025, after the committee consulted more than 75 stakeholders.

The report is explicit that it did not build its own demand-supply model. Instead, it synthesises five existing forecasts — an in-house PNGRB paper, the 2022 ICF/PNGRB National Gas Grid Technical Assessment, and outlooks from S&P Global Commodity Insights, Shell Energy India, and the IEA: "While it did not undertake a standalone, independent modelling exercise to project natural gas demand and supply for the year 2040, it recognised that any forward-looking roadmap for the sector must be firmly anchored in robust, data-driven evidence" (p. 21).

The demand numbers, five ways

The committee's own headline synthesis, stated twice in the report: "India's natural gas demand is projected to reach 260 to 300 MMSCMD by 2030 and could rise further to 365 to 500 MMSCMD by 2040 in the base case. Achieving demand up to 630 to 700 MMSCMD by 2040 is contingent upon the timely implementation of enabling policy measures and progressive regulatory reforms" (p. 147). Every source agrees CGD (city gas distribution) drives most of the growth: "From the year 2030 to 2040, majority of the growth (more than 50%) in natural gas demand is expected to come from CGD alone" (p. 140). Current consumption, for comparison, was 99 MMSCMD of domestic gas plus 102 MMSCMD of LNG in FY2025 through December 2024 — about 201 MMSCMD total (p. 20) — against 188 MMSCMD in FY2024 (p. 203).

Supply: domestic production goes nowhere, imports do all the growing

Every one of the five sources' domestic-production estimates for 2040 is flat or falling even as demand roughly doubles. The report's own words: "Domestic natural gas production is expected to rise to ~120 MMSCMD in the coming years, but may revert to ~100 MMSCMD by 2030. As a result, India's reliance on imported LNG (RLNG) will continue to grow" (p. 138). S&P Global's specific path: domestic output peaking at 123 MMSCMD in 2027 before declining to 98 MMSCMD by 2040, with LNG imports rising to 261 MMSCMD to cover the gap (p. 144). Shell's outlook has LNG imports reaching roughly 269 MMSCMD by 2040 (p. 145). The report states plainly: "Currently, India's natural gas production meets only ~50% of its demand. As demand is expected to grow significantly by 2030 and 2040, dependence on LNG will increase to bridge the demand-supply gap. Such a growth would result in doubling of LNG imports by 2030" (p. 143).

The number this report doesn't mention: 746 MMSCMD

This blog's previous piece covered a 2013 industry report to PNGRB, "Vision 2030," which projected India's gas demand would reach 746 MMSCMD by 2029-30 as its base ("realistic demand") case — not a stretch scenario, its central number. This 2025 committee's report never cites that figure, or the 2013 report by name; a full-text search of all 352 pages for "Vision 2030," "746," and "2029-30" returned nothing. The comparison is nonetheless available directly from this report's own numbers: its full "accelerated," every-reform-succeeds ceiling for 2040 — 630 to 700 MMSCMD, a full decade further out than the earlier report's target year — is still below the 2013 report's base case for 2030. What the industry called its confident, central prediction in 2013 is now, on PNGRB's own 2025 expert panel's assessment, an optimistic reach target for a decade later than originally claimed. The 2013 report implied roughly 3.1× demand growth from its 2013 base to 2029-30; this report's base case implies roughly 1.3–1.5× growth over a comparable span. Neither report explains the other's numbers, because the newer one does not engage with the older one at all.

Pricing: a coming LNG glut, and gas that still isn't under GST

The report's pricing chapter is descriptive rather than prescriptive — it proposes no new pricing formula — but its central forecast is that global LNG oversupply from 2028 will work in India's favour: "A massive wave of new LNG export capacity, combined with sluggish demand growth, is expected to push global LNG markets into oversupply in the 2028-2030 time period. This impending surplus will likely exert downward pressure on LNG prices, creating a strategic advantage for India" (p. 188), citing global LNG liquefaction capacity rising from about 474 MMTPA in early 2023 to 666.5 MMTPA by end-2028. On domestic pricing, the report describes the current formula (April 2023 guidelines): the Administered Price Mechanism (APM) ceiling is set at 10% of the average Indian crude basket price, capped and floored, with the ceiling "revised to US$6.75/MMBtu with effect from April 2025," up from US$6.50 (p. 191–192). It also runs the arithmetic on what that means for one large consumer: at a landed cost of US$8.76/MMBtu for APM gas versus US$15.34/MMBtu for imported gas, "the cost of urea produced through imported gas is Rs. 36/kg and the cost of urea produced through domestic gas is Rs. 23/kg" (p. 64).

On taxation, the report's recurring complaint is that natural gas remains outside GST nine years after GST's 2017 rollout, producing a cascading tax effect it says pushes the total tax burden on natural gas to 30–35% of landed cost in some states (p. 196). Its recommendations include bringing gas under GST with full input-tax credit, removing the 14% excise duty on CNG compression (which it says adds Rs. 8–10 per kg), and exempting customs duty on LNG imported for gas-based power and city gas distribution (pp. viii–x, 194, 197–198). It also floats a distinctive, visual proposal: mandatory colour-coded retail-station signage — green for "Green Fuel," blue for "Clean Fuel," black-grey for "Other Fuel" — to steer consumer fuel choice at the pump (p. viii–ix).

Market reform: an independent system operator, not unbundling

The report's most detailed policy chapter proposes an eight-point plan to build what it repeatedly calls a genuinely free gas market, diagnosing the current one as fragmented: "Multiple physical hubs in the gas market—17 delivery points across five regions—fragments the whole market into 17 local markets" (p. 229). Its recommendations: prohibit resale and destination-restriction clauses in RLNG supply contracts; require transparent, non-discriminatory third-party access to RLNG import terminals with an online bulletin board and secondary-market capacity trading; synchronise new pipeline development with the National Gas Grid; and, most structurally, establish an Independent System Operator for gas pipelines to oversee capacity booking and scheduling. The report is explicit that this is not the same as ownership unbundling of pipeline transportation from gas marketing, even though it cites the American experience of exactly that kind of unbundling as its inspiration: "If we do not want to follow the unbundling route, but want to maintain independence between supply and transport, then the ISO model is apt" (p. 296).

On pipeline tariffs specifically, the report recommends moving bid criteria from lowest-tariff to capital-cost bidding with Discounted Cash Flow tariff-setting, switching from Return-on-Capital-Employed to an equity-based return capped at 14% post-tax on a normative 70:30 debt-equity structure, and Viability Gap Funding for corridors that are strategically important but not commercially viable on their own.

Infrastructure: pipelines built for demand that isn't there, again

As of December 2024, India had 33,475 km of authorised gas transmission pipeline, of which 25,124 km was operational and 10,676 km under construction (p. 156–157) — figures consistent with what this blog's companion piece on pipeline utilisation reported from search-based research, now confirmed by a document read in full. That companion piece's finding that individual pipelines vary enormously in how full they run is confirmed here too, with named figures for five major cost-plus pipelines (FY26 utilisation): the East-West Pipeline at 41%, GAIL's HVJ integrated system at 71.69%, the KG Basin Pipeline at just 20.03%, Dadri-Panipat at 27.85%, and GSPL's high-pressure network running at 100.5% (Table 6.3, p. 167). LNG terminal utilisation shows the same spread: Dahej ran at 100.3% (April-December 2024) while Mundra ran at 23.6% and Kochi at 22.0% (Table 6.4A). India's total LNG regasification capacity stood at 52.7 MMTPA operational, with 10 MMTPA under construction and a further 25.2 MMTPA proposed, for a total pipeline of 87.9 MMTPA (p. 175–177).

The report's 2040 pipeline vision adds roughly 8,000 km across two national gas-grid projects and 19 named corridor projects, plus an estimated 15,000 km of local spur lines, so that all but 139 of India's districts sit within 50 km of the trunk network (p. 165). It puts the cost of completing this at "approximately US$39.73 billion (Rs. 3.34 Lakh Crore) in the accelerated scenario till 2040" against roughly US$26.0 billion in a business-as-usual case (p. 166). On gas storage, the report flags a genuine vulnerability: "Currently, India's LNG storage capacity covers approximately 12 days of total gas consumption" (p. 203), and estimates roughly 10–11 additional large LNG storage tanks would be needed to reach a 20-day strategic buffer by FY2030. On city gas specifically, it cites CGD entities' own submitted work plans projecting 120 million domestic PNG connections and 17,500 CNG stations by 2030, against roughly 14.19 million connections and 7,513 stations as of December 2024 (p. 33).

The dissent: GAIL's chairman objects, and the committee says why that's not surprising

Unusually for a government-constituted committee report, this one publishes a formal dissent in full, alongside the committee's own point-by-point rebuttal (Annexure 11, pp. 294–299). Shri Sandeep Kumar Gupta, GAIL's chairman and managing director and a committee member, objected on several grounds: that the committee should have built its own demand-supply model rather than synthesising others'; that it shouldn't comment on RLNG-terminal regulation or transportation-marketing separation while related matters are before courts; that the proposed 14% post-tax equity return on pipeline tariffs is too low (he preferred 15–16%, matching power-transmission norms); and that removing resale and destination restrictions on domestic gas sale agreements threatens energy security.

The committee's response does not merely disagree on the merits. It states outright that Gupta, as GAIL's CMD, has a direct commercial stake in several of the disputed recommendations, noting that "GAIL... is a promoter-shareholder in an entity that is contesting PNGRB's Regulations and also owns another RLNG terminal" (p. 295), and adds: "it would have indeed been difficult for him to agree to recommendations which may be contrary to GAIL's business interest/practices" (p. 295). On the resale-clause objection specifically, the committee's response is blunter still, calling it simply "a dissent" and declining to change the recommendation (p. 299). A second, narrower dissent came from Shri Suresh P Manglani of Adani Total Gas, objecting only to the RLNG third-party-access recommendation.

What doesn't follow from any of this

None of this shows the 2013 "Vision 2030" report's authors were careless, or that this 2025 committee's numbers are the final word: energy demand forecasting a decade or more out is genuinely hard, five reputable organisations' own forecasts here still span a wide range (260 to 379 MMSCMD for 2030 alone), and the 630–700 MMSCMD "accelerated" 2040 ceiling is explicitly conditional on reforms this same report is only now proposing. Nor does a published, pointed dissent from GAIL's chairman mean the committee's underlying recommendations on pipeline tariffs or market structure are wrong — a committee member disagreeing, even for reasons the committee itself says are self-interested, is not evidence the disputed recommendation is bad policy on its own terms, and this piece has not independently assessed the merits of the 14%-versus-16% tariff-return question. And the absence of any reference to the 2013 report in this one does not necessarily mean anyone involved was unaware of it; it may simply reflect that a synthesis of five current external forecasts had no obvious use for a decade-old industry projection once so dramatically overtaken by events.

Sources and caveats

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.