“Developing domestic sources involves huge capital investment. Like other emerging economies, India needs adequate supplies of energy at affordable prices to meet the demand of its rapidly growing economy,” said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

“Most of our requirement of hydrocarbons is met through imports. In India, the demand over the next 10 years will increase by over 40 percent whereas the increase in the supply from the maturing oil-fields is expected to be around 12 percent,” he said while addressing a petroleum conference in New Delhi.

India, which is struggling to catch up with China that has gained a head start in the race for oil in Africa and other parts of the world for fuel supplies, already imports nearly 80 percent of its crude oil to fuel an economy that is the second-fastest expanding in the world after the neighboring Communist nation.

“The Indian government is encouraging national oil companies to pursue equity in oil and gas opportunities overseas,” said Singh. Recently, state-run explorer Oil & Gas Corp. received a proposal from investment bankers to purchase Exxon Mobil’s stake in an oil field in Angola for $2 billion.

“We seek to build strong economic partnerships with other producing countries and their oil and gas industries to the mutual benefit of each other,” he said. “We also need a rethink on the traditional energy basket which is presently loaded in favor of fossil fuels.”

In March, Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil exporter, vowed to almost double crude shipments to India and study “enhancement” of joint projects as Asia’s third-largest economy seeks to increase supply for planned refineries.

Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi was quoted as saying at the time that the biggest Arab economy would raise crude supply to India to 40 million tons a year, or about 770,000 barrels a day, from 25.5 million tons a year.

Some energy-endowed countries have problems in augmenting production because of various reasons, including lack of the required technology and sometimes political uncertainty. “The emerging energy technologies have to be adequately equipped to manage carbon emissions,” said Singh.

Another key hurdle faced by all the countries of the world today is the challenge of climate change. “We also seek to work together with other countries especially those which are active in the oil and gas space to tackle the problem of climate change,” he said.

India and China argue that rich countries bear historic responsibility for climate change and that developing nations therefore shouldn’t be legally bound to cut carbon emissions blamed for rising temperatures.

Both the countries are facing accusation of failing to keep a lid on carbon emissions as the world’s two fastest-growing economies burn dirty coal to power factories and have record number of fuel-guzzling cars on the road.

Separately, India said it expects investments of up to $55 billion in the next five years in the renewable energy sector, which would generate 35,000MW of power.

“There would be investments to the tune of USD 55 billion by 2015 in the renewable energy sector which is expected to produce 35GW of power,” said Debashish Majumdar, CMD of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency.