India has gone ahead and launched a national deepwater exploration mission so as to tap more of its present energy resources, throttle the domestic energy supply, and decrease dependence on international imports, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15, 2025.
In an address on the Independence Day of the country, Prime Minister Modi said that India is going to harness its deepwater energy resources, make the energy self-reliance more robust, and also decrease the dependence when it comes to foreign fuel imports. Apparently, India is also boosting its energy capacity with advancements within nuclear, solar, hydro, and hydrogen energy, said the prime minister. The deepwater exploration mission is going to add further to another mission, which is the National Critical Minerals Mission, in order to secure the resources that are necessary for industry, energy, and defence. India looks forward to launching the exploration across 1200 sites when it comes to critical minerals.
According to Prime Minister Modi, controlling these minerals goes on to strengthen the strategic autonomy, thereby ensuring the country’s industrial as well as defence sectors remain self-dependent.
Interestingly, India prepares itself for an offshore exploration boom post launching the biggest ever acreage, which is up for grabs under the open acreage licensing program – OALP round X.
Hardeep Singh Puri, the minister of petroleum and natural gas, government of India, in July 2025 posted on X that the focus clearly happens on further enhancing as well as making the domestic E&P efforts more robust. During that time, he was on a visit to an offshore industry event in Bergen, Norway.
Mr. Puri added that the energy journey of India offers engagement opportunities along with Indian companies throughout multiple areas, which includes the joint participation in the upcoming OALP – X bidding round and partnership when it comes to subsea manifold and offshore technology development, in addition to rolling out AI-driven solutions in terms of digital transformation within upstream operations.
Notably, India is looking forward to boosting its domestic oil and gas production amidst the consistently growing demand as well as volatile international energy prices. In a starting figure, the country happens to depend on imports for over 85% of its daily oil needs.
The dependence of India on crude oil imports set a record high in the last fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, as Indian fuel demand consistently grows, whereas the domestic crude production still remains flat.
India went on to import almost 88.2% of the crude it consumed between April 2024 and February 2025. The import dependence grew from 87.7% within the same period of the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
