Visakhapatnam: India’s first massive underground strategic storage facility at a rock cavern built at Vizag to store crude oil for emergency requirements of the country is all tanked up. The facility, developed by India Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL), has been commissioned. It was to have been commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year. The filling of another cavern built at Mangalore has also begun in October.
The ISPRL planned caverns at Vizag, Mangalore and Pudur. The Vizag’s cavern storage capacity is 1.3 million metric tonnes and the facility is a 7.5-km long tunnel with several caverns to store various grades of crude oil. The roof of these caverns is 162 metres below sea level. Its initial capa-city of 1 MMT was later increased by 0.3 MMT, and cost Rs 1,129 crore. The total capacity of the thr-ee facilities will be 5.3 MMT and can meet 90 days of energy needs in case of oil supply disruption due to any emergency.
Consignments of the crude oil were brought in Very Large Crude Carrie-rs and unloaded at HPCL’s single point moo-ring berth at Vizag port. “Under Strategic Petro-leum Reserve project Ph-ase-I, underground rock caverns for total storage of 5.33 MMT of crude oil at three locations, Visak-hapatnam (1.33 MMT), Mangalore (1.50 MMT) and Padur (2.5 MMT) ha-ve been created. The Vis-akhapatnam and Mangalore storage facilities have already been commissioned. The facility at Vizag has already been filled up and nearly one-fo-urth of Mangalore storage facility has also been filled. The storage facility at Padur has also been completed. The total app-roved expenditure is Rs 4,098.35 crore of which Rs 3,552.59 crore has alrea-dy been disbursed,” said Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan in reply to Congress Lok Sabha member Veer-appa Moily. India joined countries like the US, Japan, and China that have strategic reserves with the Vizag facility coming into operation.
