India continues to look for alternatives to oil imports as its auto sector, economy, and population continue to boom. India’s oil consumption growth reached a record-level 11 percent last year as an increasing urban population with rising income fueled greater use of cars, trucks, and motorbikes. The country consumed 196.5 million tons of oil products in 2016, up from 177.5 million tons in 2015, according to the Oil Ministry’s Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell. Demand for gasoline jumped 12 percent last year to 23.7 million tons, while diesel demand grew 5.6 percent to 76.7 million tons. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that India was the fourth largest consumer of crude oil and petroleum products in the world in 2015, after the U.S., China, and Japan. The country depends heavily on imported crude oil, mostly from the Middle East, similar to China. More than 80 percent of its crude […]