Centre okays 2 more storage facilities for strategic oil reserves

The Centre gave its nod for setting up of two underground facilities to store crude oil for commercial and strategic purpose, under the second phase of the petroleum reserve programme, minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Rameswar Teli told the Lok Sabha in a written response on Monday.

The 6.5 million metric tonnes-capacity storage facility, for which the Centre had allocated a budget of ₹210 crore in the 2020-21 fiscal year, is proposed to be set up at Chandikhol (with 4MMT capacity) in Odisha’s Jajpur district and Karnataka’s Padur (having 2.5 MMT capacity) on public-private-partnership mode.

The government said the Request for Proposal for building these storage facilities was waiting finalisation.

The Centre established 5.33MMT-capacity facilities at three places, including Vishakhapatnam (1.33MMT), Mangaluru (1.5MMT) and Padur (2.5MMT), under the first phase of its strategic petroleum reserves programme through Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL) to store crude oil.

“The petroleum reserves established under Phase I are strategic in nature and the crude oil stored in these reserves will be used during an oil shortage event, as and when declared so by Government of India,” the ministry of petroleum and natural gas said in a statement.