India is in talks with potential partners on supplying oil for its planned strategic petroleum reserve, the country's oil minister said Thursday.
India
is in
talks with potential partners on supplying oil for its planned strategic
petroleum reserve, the country's oil minister said Thursday.
India
is
seeking overseas partners from both the public and private sectors, oil
minister Veerappa Moily said on the sidelines of an energy conference in
Seoul
. He
didn't name the parties or give a target date for first deliveries.
The cost of filling the reserves will be a heavy burden for
India
,
given the rupee's recent sharp fall against the dollar, the currency in which
oil is priced.
Construction work on the initial three storage centers near the southern Indian
cities of Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur is due to be completed in the
first half of 2014, with the cost excluding the oil expected to be more than
$600 million.
In late 2011,
India
's
former Oil Secretary G.C. Chaturvedi said the first-stage tanks would hold some
5.33 million tons of crude oil, equivalent to 39 million barrels. Additional
tanks would bring
India
's SPR
capacity to 132 million barrels by 2020.
He said
India
was
studying various models for partnerships, including allowing partners to store
oil and withdraw it for selling along with guarantees they would replace it in
times of need.
That model is similar to what is being done in
Japan
and
South
Korea
.
On Wednesday, Iraq Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said an initial agreement
will be signed with
South Korea
to
store about 4 million barrels of oil in the North Asian country, in what will
be the latest of a string of similar arrangements between
Seoul
and
oil producers.
India
imports
78% of its crude oil needs, while
South
Korea
relies almost entirely on
imports.
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