India's ONGC to reserve half of new oil storage for strategic needs

Half of the 1.75 million tonnes petroleum storage facility being developed by state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) at Mangaluru will be reserved for strategic petroleum reserves, while the remaining capacity will be used for commercial operations, the government said on Monday.

Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Suresh Gopi in a written reply in Rajya Sabha said that ONGC is developing the facility, which will have a total capacity of 1.75 million tonnes.

The project will be fully funded by ONGC, he said.

Gopi said the government of India, through a special purpose vehicle called Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL), has established Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) facilities, under Phase-I, with a total capacity of 5.33 million tonnes of crude oil at three locations - Visakhapatnam (1.33 million tonnes), Mangaluru (1.5 million tonnes) and Padur, Karnataka (2.5 million tonnes).

"In addition to the above, India has a storage capacity of crude oil and refined petroleum products across the full energy supply chain infrastructure spread across the country's ecosystem of offshore facilities, refineries and a pipeline network of over 35,000 km. This is in the form of above-ground storage tanks, pipeline systems, terminal tankages, offshore storage, refinery tankage etc," he said.

"Collectively, India holds a national capacity for storage of crude oil and petroleum products equivalent to meet 74 days of its net crude import requirement."

The minister said the government in July 2021 also approved the establishment of two additional commercial-cum-strategic petroleum reserve facilities with total storage capacity of 6.5 million tonnes in Odisha and Karnataka.

"Further, there is a continuous assessment of new sites for establishment of additional SPRs," he said. "The budget allocation from the Government to ISPRL has various components like operations and maintenance, purchase of strategic crude oil, construction of caverns and purchase of land. Budgetary allocation every year depends on the requirements of ISPRL under each of these components, as assessed by the Government."