Establish regional energy ring in South Asia: Shinde

New Delhi: India has asked other South Asian countries to enhance cooperation for enabling exchange of oil, gas and electricity in the region.

'Facilitating and promoting trade in energy in South Asia has been identified as one of the key areas for cooperation. In view of the potential for regional cooperation, an Energy Ring has been conceptualised in the SAARC region,' the Power Minister, Mr Sushilkumar Shinde, said while inaugurating the South Asia Energy Dialogue here.

This Ring would basically consist of inter-country links for exchange of electricity, gas and oil, Mr Shinde said at the conference being attended by Energy Ministers of the member countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Energy trade


The SAARC Working Group on Energy was also formulating the Terms of Reference for study on energy trade in the region, he said.

'This is an evolving area and we have high expectations from this dialogue for providing further inputs in this area. We could also look at successful experiences of developing inter-country grid connections,' Mr Shinde said.

India already has grid interconnections with Nepal and Bhutan and technical studies were being conducted to explore the feasibility of similar transmission links with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, he said.

'We have several examples in the world where countries of a region have pooled their energy sources on the basis of complementarities. In our region also the energy output from various sources varies in different seasons and there are surpluses and deficits that could complement each other,' he added.