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Naik, Vajpayee to discuss exploration, strategic reserves
Monday, 03 February 2003, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: With war clouds hovering over Iraq, India will be taking stock of hydrocarbon (oil and gas) situation in the country.
Petroleum Minister Ram Naik is scheduled to make a presentation to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Monday.
At the meeting, the petroleum ministry will primarily focus on enhanced upstream exploration and production efforts to boost domestic supplies, official sources said.
The presentation would focus on efforts to acquire equity oil overseas and the blueprint on plans to build strategic crude oil reserves to meet India's requirement, initially for 45 days.
Producing around 34 million tonnes of crude oil annually, India depends on imports for 70 percent of its requirements.
To help tide over any disruption in supplies, India has been studying the feasibility of building up strategic reserves to stock up supplies for 45 days initially that can later be enhanced to 90 days along the lines of the U.S.
India's current storage capacity with domestic refineries is 5.7 million tonnes, which is sufficient for over 15 days depending on demand. This is in addition to the rolling stock of petroleum products with fuel stations.
With an estimated 
52 billion expense involved in setting up strategic storage infrastructure and acquiring and storing stock for 15 days requirement, the petroleum ministry has been studying how the expenses could be shared by the federal government and the state-owned oil sector majors, two of which are now slated for disinvestments.
One of the proposals being mulled to execute the project is to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV).
The funding is proposed through levy of cess on petroleum products to meet the operational costs and the refining companies contributing towards setting up storage capacity of 2.5 million tonnes at Rajkot in Gujarat, 1.5 million tonnes in Mangalore in Karnataka, and one million tonnes at Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
The presentation would also detail new oil and gas discoveries in the country in the last couple of years from blocks awarded under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).
Recent new discoveries of natural gas in the east coast in particular have raised India's hope of being able to reduce the gap between demand and supply, even as it is scouting for new long-term supply sources overseas.
Source: IANS
52 billion expense involved in setting up strategic storage infrastructure and acquiring and storing stock for 15 days requirement, the petroleum ministry has been studying how the expenses could be shared by the federal government and the state-owned oil sector majors, two of which are now slated for disinvestments.
One of the proposals being mulled to execute the project is to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV).
The funding is proposed through levy of cess on petroleum products to meet the operational costs and the refining companies contributing towards setting up storage capacity of 2.5 million tonnes at Rajkot in Gujarat, 1.5 million tonnes in Mangalore in Karnataka, and one million tonnes at Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
The presentation would also detail new oil and gas discoveries in the country in the last couple of years from blocks awarded under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).
Recent new discoveries of natural gas in the east coast in particular have raised India's hope of being able to reduce the gap between demand and supply, even as it is scouting for new long-term supply sources overseas.
Source: IANS