Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (MS)
Mangaluru, Feb 22: India has got rights on 65% crude oil that is produced by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). This means that India is going to get 60 lac barrels of crude oil and this will be stored in the maiden underground cavern.
"ADNOC will start the process of transporting the oil in three huge oil tanker vessels from April 2018. The crude oil storage facility can store 15 lac tonnes or 1.1 crore barrels of crude oil. ADNOC is going to supply crude oil, which is half the capacity of our storage facility," said one of the senior officials.
35% of the crude oil that will be stored in Mangaluru storage facility will be used by ADNOC for its commercial use. Rest 65% is for use in India. This storage will be kept as reserve to be used in situations wherein there is a shortage of crude oil supply from foreign countries or when there is an emergency in the demand for fuel in the country.
Pride of Mangaluru
Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL) has built three underground Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) in Mangaluru and Padur in Udupi on the west coast and at Visakhapatnam on the eastern coast. From the Mangaluru storage facility, it is possible to supply 2.8 days of fuel requirement of the entire country.
What is Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR)
Underground Caverns are built deep inside the earth to meet the emergency demands of fuel in the country. This is necessary to meet the unforeseen demands during security threat to the country. India has a total storage capacity of 3.6 crore barrels of fuel in SPRs, which is enough to meet 10 days of fuel demand of the nation.
Third storage centre for ADNOC
Mangaluru SPR is the third storage centre for ADNOC in Asia. Japan and South Korea are the two other centres where ADNOC stores its crude oil.