India is unable to rapidly ramp up coal output due to the long process of getting environmentalclearance and difficulties in acquiring land for opening new mines.
They point to the Sakhalin-2 project off Russia's Far East coast, where Gazprom gained majority control from Royal Dutch Shell last year, after Russian authorities refused to give Shell environmentalclearance for the scheme.
For much of 2012 it was impossible to get investors interested in the Alpha project for another reason: In May the federal government in Canberra stopped the clock on environmentalclearance for the project, after the Queensland government cleared it.