India's crude oil production declined by 5 percent and natural gas output slipped by 8 percent in the fiscal year to March 2021 as private and public sector firms produced less,. Crude oil production fell to 30.5 million tonnes in 2020-21 from 32.17 million tonnes a year back, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

ONGC produced over 2 percent less oil at 20.2 million tonnes than a year back as a nationwide lockdown that lasted over two months shut some of its fields. Whereas, Oil India Ltd (OIL) produced 5.4 percent less oil while fields operated by private firms such as Vedanta's Cairn saw 12.6 percent less output.

Natural gas production at 28.67 billion cubic meters was over 8 percent less than 31.18 bcm output in 2019-20. However, output in March was 11 percent higher as Reliance Industries-BP started output from their KG basin fields.

Gas production in March 2021 was higher "due to new field D-34 (KG-D6 block of Reliance-BP), which started production in December 2020 with 1.3 million standard cubic meters per day, ramped up to 9.6 mmscmd in March 2021," notes accompanying the data said.

With the pandemic pummelling economic activity, resulting in fall in fuel demand, India's public and private sector refiners processed nearly 13 per cent less crude oil at 221.7 million tonnes in 2020-21.

Public sector refiners such as IOC had nearly 12 percent less crude processing at 127.5 million tones, while the refineries produced 11.2 percent less petroleum products at 233.4 million tonnes in 2020-21, the data showed.

India is nearly 85 percent dependent on imports to meet its crude oil needs. It spent USD 61.9 billion in 2020-21 on the import of 198.2 million tonnes of crude oil. This was lower than USD 101.4 billion spent on import of 227 million tonnes crude in the previous fiscal.

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