Half of ONGC's new 1.75 MT Mangaluru oil reserve to be kept for strategic stockpile: Govt

Half of the 1.75 million tonnes strategic petroleum reserve facility being developed by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will be earmarked for emergency crude oil stockpile and the remaining capacity will be used for commercial operations, the government informed Parliament.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Suresh Gopi said the project is being developed by ONGC and will be fully funded by the state-owned company.

"ONGC is developing a strategic petroleum reserve facility of 1.75 MMT capacity at Mangaluru. Fifty per cent of this storage will be reserved as strategic storage and the rest 50 per cent of the capacity will be available to ONGC for commercial operations," he said.

The minister was responding to queries on whether the government had approved the development of the SPR project by ONGC and whether the company had been directed to explore commercial utilisation of the proposed facility.

In a separate reply, the government said India currently has a national storage capacity for crude oil and petroleum products equivalent to 74 days of its net crude import requirement.

The minister said the country has established strategic petroleum reserve facilities with a total capacity of 5.33 MMT under Phase-I at Visakhapatnam (1.33 MMT), Mangaluru (1.5 MMT) and Padur (2.5 MMT) through Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Ltd (ISPRL).

"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.

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

Replying to a question on whether the government plans to prepare a roadmap to achieve 90 days of crude oil storage capacity, the minister did not specify a timeline but said the assessment of new sites for additional strategic reserves is an ongoing process.

“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.”