(FE)
At a time when oil majors such as the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Saudi Arabia national oil company Saudi Aramco have shown interest to participate in India’s strategic petroleum reserves programme, the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves (ISPRL) on Wednesday launched the second phase of the programme through a road show here.
Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said some trading companies apart from the companies mentioned above have also evinced interest to participate in the strategic reserve programme. Two more road shows will also be held in London and Singapore soon to take feedback from investors before floating bids for these reserves which will be offered through public-private-partnership (PPP).
Created in June, 2004, ISPRL is a special purpose vehicle wholly owned by the Oil Industry Development Board under the ministry of petroleum and natural gas and has been assigned to develop and maintain underground caverns to store crude oil to mitigate shortages during supply disruptions.
In the first phase, India has built a strategic reserve capacity of 5.3 million tonne (MT) across three locations — Vishakhapatnam (1.33 MT), Mangaluru (1.5 MT) and Padur (2.5 MT) — at a cost of Rs.4,098 crore. ISRPL is now looking to develop two more caverns—a second one at Padur and another at Chandikhol—with a combined storage capacity of 6.5 MT at a cost off R11,000 crore.
