India contains less than one percent of world’s oil and gas reserves and imports more than 82% of its oil and 50% of gas requirement. India’s high import dependency has been a cause of concern to its policy makers and energy security strategists. Its energy policy has evolved over a sustained period of economic growth and currently comprises a mix of enhancing domestic exploration, supply diversification, demand side management, and securing long term supplies through equity oil acquisition. None of these strategies work in isolation, which brings overseas equity oil acquisition to the forefront of India’s energy security strategy. This study focuses on analysing the factors for global acquisition of oil and gas resources by India. Following a systematic review of the literature, sixteen factors were selected and five additional factors emerged through a survey conducted through a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. A total of 268 participant’s responses to the survey were analysed. Using the statistical method of Factor Analysis, each factor column was scanned for identifying variables with significant high loadings, and from each factor column, the variables having a factor loading of more than 0.5 were selected. The results showed five factors were successfully constructed using factor analysis, labelled as long term stable policy, concessional State funding, resource pooling, decentralisation, andknowledge and technology transfer. The five factors extracted and presented in this paper will help energy policy practitioners and policy makers to understand how these success factors are related to each other, and shall help in planning energy resources acquisition strategies towards augmenting energy security of India.

 

Keywords: Energy Security, Equity Oil, Factor Analysis, Questionnaire Survey