India dips in to weakened crude market to fill up its strategic oil reserves

April 23, 2020 4:43 pm

India in a concerted effort to step up its energy security and taking advantage of prevailing very low crude oil prices in the international market is playing an active role through coastal Karnataka based Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited in filling Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL) underground crude oil caverns in Mangaluru and Padur. The other strategic reserve of ISPRL is located at Vishakapatnam.

Ministry of petroleum and natural gas has mandated ISPRL to work closely with public sector oil companies including MRPL to achieve the target of filling up Mangaluru and Padur caverns. India has built 5.33 million tonnes of emergency storage that is enough to meet its oil needs for 9.5 days it these three strategic reserves and also has allowed foreign oil companies to store oil there on condition that it can use this stockpile in case of an emergency.

Series of crude oil cargos of varying volumes from 1 to 2 million barrels that MRPL, IOCL and BPCL have sourced, will be unloaded in the single point mooring (SPM) of MRPL under jurisdiction of New Mangalore Port Trust during April and May before onset of monsoon in the region. MoPNG has already informed this development through a tweet that it is going an extra mile to meet India’s energy security despite Covid-19 challenge.M Venkatesh, MD, MRPL confirmed that the first consignment of 2 million barrels by MRPL and second consignment of 1 million barrel by IOCL has already been successfully unloaded into the caverns. ISPRL stated that taking advantage of low crude oil prices, it has started filling the strategic reserves to enhance the energy security of the nation. MRPL, IOCL, BPCL and HPCL are associated in this exercise to fill the three strategic reserves.

MRPL’s role is crucial in filling the 1.5 MMT facility in Mangaluru and 2.5 MMT facility at Padur as it extends its single point mooring (SPM) and booster station facilities for this activity. MRPLs SPM facility is located 17-kilometres from shore and within NMPT jurisdiction, in the Arabian Sea and is being utilised to pump crude oil from ships of different size including very large crude carriers vessels that can’t make it to New Mangalore Port.

Crude discharged through SPM and subsea pipeline (17 km) reaches MRPL booster station located at landfall point. From the station, crude is routed through oil pipeline to Mangaluru ISPRL cavern located within MSEZL or through the booster pump to caverns located in Padur in Udupi, around 30-km away. MRPL constitutes 7 Percent of the Indian crude oil refining capacity and meets demand of Karnataka and neighbouring regions of border states.

ISPRL has constructed and commissioned underground rock caverns for storage of total 5.33 MT (around 39 million barrels) of crude oil at Vishakhapatnam (1.33 MT), Mangaluru (1.5 MT) and Padur (2.5 MT). Padur storage has four compartments of 0.625 MT each and ADNOC may use half of the storage capacity for stocking its oil. In Mangalore, ADNOC that signed an MoU with ISPRL had agreed to stock 5.86 million barrels of 0.75 MT of oil.