By Nidhi Verma
NEW DELHI, Aug 3 (Reuters) – India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp will reserve half of its planned 1.75 million metric ton (about 13 million barrels)oil storage facility to meet the country’s strategic needs, junior oil minister Suresh Gopi told lawmakers on Monday.
ONGC, India’s top oil explorer, last month announced plans to build the strategic petroleum reserve at Mangaluru in Karnataka state, where its Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals subsidiary operates a refinery with capacity of 300,000 barrels per day.
New Delhi is expanding its Strategic Petroleum Reserve capacity with private participation.
Indian rules allow commercial use of a part of the existing SPR storage built at three locations – Mangaluru, Padur and Vizag – in southern India with 5.33 million tons of capacity. These storage facilities are managed by the government-owned Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL).
MRPL has already leased half of the 1.5 million ton Mangaluru SPR.
Gopi also said India has the capacity to store crude oil and petroleum products to meet 74 days of its net crude import needs, including inventories in refinery tanks, offshore facilities and its 35,000 km (22,000 miles) pipeline network.
India plans to build about 4 million tons of strategic storage at Chandikhol in the eastern state of Odisha and a new 2.5 million ton facility at Padur in southern India in collaboration with private companies. Gopi said ISPRL has acquired the land for the Chandikhol project, which is estimated to cost 90 billion Indian rupees ($944.44 million).
($1 = 95.2950 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Susan Fenton)