India’s storage tanks to be full in third week of May

Low oil prices are an opportunity for India to stock up on the commodity, and the pumps at Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd’s (ISPRL) underground storage caverns are busy. The public sector company’s MD and CEO HPS Ahuja told BusinessLine on Saturday that the country’s storage caverns, in Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur (Karnataka), which together can hold 5.33. million tonnes (mt) of crude, will be full roughly by the third week of May.

Ahuja had said on April 7 that the caverns, as on that date, held crude to 56 per cent of their capacity. With some more oil put in, the stocks have gone up. However, on the basis of contracts for oil supply made, it would take till about the third week of May for the tanks to brim up.