India's emergency oil stock storages face delay

The first of the 5.33 million tonne of storages at Vishkhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur were to be built by 2013.

"There are some issues we faced to build the underground cavern at Vishkhapatnam. While a smaller compartment with 0.3 illion tonne will be commissioned as per schedule in March 2013, the bigger 1 million tonne cavern would be commissioned only a year later," said Rajan K Pillai, CEO of ISPRL, the

firm building the strategic storages, said at the Petrotech 2012 Oil and Gas Conference here.

Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd, a subsidiary of Oil India Development Board (OIDB), is a special purpose vehicle that is building the strategic stockpile.

The 1.33 million tonne strategic storage under construction at Visakhapatnam will cost Rs 1,038 crore and was to be completed by October this year.

The Rs 732 crore, 1.5 million tonne Mangalore storage would be completed by December 2013. The third storage at Padur, with a capacity to stock 2.5 million tonne of crude oil and cost Rs 993 crore, would be ready by April 2014.

Pillai said studies have been initiated to construct space to store an additional 12.5 million tonne of strategic reserves.

Additional storage of 5 million tonne was being considered at Padur in Karnataka and 2.5 million tonne each at Chandikhol in Odisha, Rajkot in Gujarat and Bikaner in Rajasthan.

The

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