middle east why India is storing crude oil in underground caves

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Oil Crisis Amidst the drone attack on two major Saudi oil bases, US President Trump has said that he is looking at the global crisis over the oil and said that he would like to maintain a stable market in case of an oil slump emergency. (SPR) ie underground oil storage ready to be used.

To tackle the oil crisis, India has also built three underground reserves, in which about 53 lakh tonnes of crude oil can be stored.

Underground oil reserves

India imports more than three-quarters of its crude oil. In such a situation, a slight decrease in the supply of oil coming from abroad due to any reason can be a matter of great difficulty for him.

This is the reason why they need to create such strategic reserves was felt for a long time. Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL) has so far developed reserves with a capacity of 13.3 lakh tonnes at three locations Visakhapatnam, 1.5 million tonnes at Mangalore (Karnataka) and 2.5 million tonnes at Padur (Karnataka).

And capacity will increase

In the 2017-18 budget speech by Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, it was announced that two more such stores would be set up at Chandikhol in Odisha and Bikaner in Rajasthan. Apart from this, plans are also underway to build underground oil reserves in Rajkot, Gujarat.

That’s how it started

The United States began to build underground oil reserves in 1975, following the oil crisis of 1973–74. The state of Louisiana and Texas have the world’s largest emergency supplies of underground oil reserves.

Presently there are about 87 million tonnes of oil stores here. During the first Gulf War in 1991, oil was used from here. SPR was used after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and worsening relations with Libya in 2011.

Countries with the largest underground oil reserves

China has the second-largest crude oil reserves in the world after the US. In this case, Japan occupies third place.

There are many advantages

Such an underground storage of crude oil has many advantages. Firstly, in the event of an attack or disaster, the country’s energy security is not suddenly endangered.

During the Gulf War in 1991, these reserves were of considerable use to the US. Secondly, the use of this reserve stock can keep the oil prices in the country under control when the prices of crude oil are suddenly very high.

In addition, underground storage is the least expensive way to store crude oil. Since the reserves are deep enough, there is no need for land acquisition and security arrangements on a large scale.

Oil flies in very small quantities in it and since these reserves are also built on the seashore, it is also easy to fill crude oil with ships.