"After 2020, many buyers are looking to emerging supply regions as a solution. However, we know that emerging supply regions face many challenges," Coleman said in Gujarat as part of Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb's delegation to India this week when the CEO signed a memorandum of understanding with Adani Enterprises to identify and develop commercial initiatives.

"So we actually need to make final investment decisions on new LNG projects now to ensure that we don't have a global shortfall as early as 2020-2021.

"The requirement for new LNG supply investment increases very quickly - we need more than 50 million tonnes per annum of new projects to take investment decisions in the next few years to avoid a shortfall as early as 2023.

"Delays or the deferment of project final investment decisions will lead us to a supply crunch."

Coleman underpinned the urgency of this message by highlighting how the oil and gas industry's financial performance was "deteriorating".

He said companies' returns on average capital deployed lower than they were in 2001, citing an IHS study of 80 oil and gas companies, not including national oil companies.

From 2010-2013, these returns averaged 1.1% lower than the weighted average cost of capital - an erosion that stripped $400 billion in value from the industry, he noted.

Meanwhile, upstream costs have quadrupled for the industry over the past 14 years, exacerbated by the depressed price environment, which puts cash flows under pressure.

"More than ever before, our boards and our shareholders want to see us making disciplined investment decisions," Coleman said.

This is where he hopes the deal with Indian giant Adani will garner similar benefits as the long-established Asian relationships have over the past few decades, by leveraging the new Indian government's eagerness for foreign investment and India's LNG demand forecast to grow from about 15 million tonnes per annum this year to about 35MMtpa in 2025.

"Woodside already has significant investors from Japan and China in our LNG business," Coleman said.

"Early investment by foundation customers has been critical to the development of our projects. This cooperation has seen us safely and reliably deliver more than 4000 cargoes of LNG over 25 years to Asia.

"I also see potential for Indian companies to co-invest in Woodside's LNG-related activities.

"We know that securing reliable sources of cleaner energy is the key to India's sustained development and prosperity."