India on verge of exhausting baryte reserve, says report

Visakhapatnam: The Centre for Domestic Economy Policy Research (C-DEP.in) released a report warning that India is on the verge of exhausting its only major baryte reserve, placing the country’s long-term energy security at risk. With domestic extraction continuing at high levels, India is now the only major economy in the world with less than 10 years of accessible baryte reserves left.

Baryte is an essential mineral for oil and gas drilling, with no viable substitutes for stabilising high-pressure wells during exploration. Without an assured domestic supply, India’s exploration programmes in the Andaman Basin and the Krishna–Godavari Basin will face immediate operational disruptions, the report mentioned.

Further, it highlighted that 95 per cent of India’s baryte wealth is concentrated in the Mangampet mine in Andhra Pradesh where proven reserves have declined from 49 million tonnes in 2015 to under 23 million tonnes in 2024, a 53 per cent fall within a decade. This decline has been driven by unsustainable exports without parallel efforts to build a strategic reserve for India’s long-term energy and domestic requirements.

The report, titled ‘Analysis of the Impact of Rapid Depletion of Baryte Reserves on Energy Security’, was released at IIT Delhi by Praveen Prakash IAS (retd.), former Managing Director of the Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC), the state-owned PSU responsible for managing the Mangampet reserve. “The depletion of the baryte reserve is not just a mineral issue; it is a national energy-security concern,” said Prakash. The report notes that the rapid fall in reserves is driven primarily by exports, mainly to the United States, which now accounts for a major share of APMDC’s output.