‘Adnoc, Aramco interested in India’s petroleum reserves venture’

UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco have shown interest in participating in the country’s strategic petroleum reserves programme, including in the second phase of the plan which aims to build two additional storage facilities with total capacity of 6.5 million tonne (MT) at Chandikhol in Odisha (4 MT) and Padur in Karnataka (2.5 MT), oil and gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday.

The country’s existing strategic petroleum reserve facilities — located in Visakhapatnam (1.3 MT), Mangaluru (1.5 MT) and Padur (2.5 MT) — can provide for about 9.5 days of crude oil requirement as per the consumption pattern of FY20. State-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) can stock for another 64.5 days. The government is planning to increase crude and petroleum products storage capacity from the existing 74 days to 86 days.