NEW DELHI: India will soon build a natural gas trading platform , which will help lead to transparent pricing and encourage investment in the sector, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said.Most gas produced in India today is governed by a government-set price formula and certain sectors such as fertilizer and city gas get priority over others as gas consumers, mainly because local production is low and half of the gas requirement is met by imported liquefied natural gas ( LNG ).Some of the top oil industry executives who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday also raised the long-standing demand of the industry to fast move towards market pricing for natural gas produced in the country.Terming the proposed platform as the “next biggest reform in the gas sector”, Pradhan said it would will help bring transparency in the market discovery of price and certainty on investment return to companies. “Until unless we give certainty to the investor, he will not invest,” Pradhan said. India needs huge investment in exploration and production, import terminals and pipelines and needs massive private and foreign capital for that.Pradhan said a proposal for setting up a natural gas exchange will soon be taken to the Cabinet. The government-set formula for natural gas will not disappear immediately as there are some priority gas-consuming sectors but the country will “gradually” move towards transparent mechanism, Pradhan said.This would help boost gas consumption in the country, where gas’s contribution in the energy mix is barely 6-7%, compared to world average of 24%, Pradhan said, adding that there was huge potential of gas consumption in several sectors of the economy, including power, transportation and manufacturing.Price decontrol and building a gas hub is about moving towards a competitive gas market that will help draw investments, said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman, IHS Markit , an energy intelligence group. The proposed exchange would help trade both domestic and imported LNG.Open access to LNG terminals as well as to gas pipelines would be essential to build a functional natural gas hub, GAIL chairman B C Tripathi said. GAIL is the biggest gas marketer and transporter of the country.