Lauding India's progress in the energy sector, the International Energy Agency on Monday said that investment in the gas sector in the country would rise to over $50 billion by the year 2030.

"The total global investment in gas will be about $3 trillion by 2030, while the projected investment in India about $50 billion," IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil said at the second Asia Gas Summit in Mumbai.

Lauding India's initiative in encouraging private sector, Mandil said it is commendable as investments in the energy sector in future would come from the private sector.

By 2030, about 50 per cent of gas on the global level would be utilised for electricity generation while in India it would be about 60 per cent, he said and expected India's total investment in the electricity sector would be $665 billion, natural gas $44 billion, oil $32 billion and in coal $25 billion by then.

The agency, however, expressed concern over the state of Indian state electricity boards where the revenue sales cover only 70 per cent of the costs and transmission and distribution losses are huge.

He said there would be enough money in the world to finance future energy requirement and would constitute about 1 per cent of the world GDP in coming years.

Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani said the current demand of 315 million tonnes of oil equivalent would rise seven-fold to 2,000 million tonnes of OE by 2020.

Year 2005 would be a debut of gas industry which would be the final bridge to enter hydrogen economy later in the century, Ambani said, adding that about 742,000 trillion gas hydrate reserves across the globe are waiting to be tapped.

Unlike gas reserves, the hydrate reserves are nearer to the energy markets, he said adding, there are huge gas hydrate reserves on the east and west coast of India.

Ambani said the supply of gas is shifting from West Asia to Russia and Central Asia while the demand is also shifting from North America to countries like India and China.

There have been major gas discoveries in South Asia and South East Asia but the region is not properly tapped, Ambani added.

India's largest oilfield at Mumbai High, which accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the country's output, produces 220,000 barrels per day.

India imports nearly 70 per cent of its crude oil requirement to produce petroleum products.

The semi-discovered blocks on offer from Iran are Abadan Plain and Saveh-Gartnsar. Later it also offered 40 per cent equity in the sprawling oilfield Azadegan South to get India moving on the proposed LNG project.

Azadegan is Iran's biggest oil field with potential reserves of around 26 billion barrels of crude oil.

This offer came after India's flagship overseas investment arm ONGC Videsh Ltd discarded a previous list of three producing and two semi-discovered fields saying that ''an additional list was necessary' as the data on previous fields were limited.