By IANS
Noida : India will build crude oil reserves of five million tonnes at an estimated investment of Rs.24 million ($585 million) to address its rising energy demand, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said here Wednesday.
"The government of India has decided to construct a strategic crude oil reserve of five million tonnes to meet the emergent demands of the oil sector," Deora told reporters in this suburb of the national capital.
The reserves were likely to come up in Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur with funds coming from Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB), Deora said after laying the foundation stone for the board's new building here.
For this purpose, a holding company called Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd has been created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the board, he added. The board is an autonomous body established in 1975 under an act of parliament to provide financial assistance for the development of oil and gas industry.
The board has so far given loan assistance worth Rs.216 billion to various projects like the Mumbai High fields of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, the Numaligarh Refinery in Assam and the gas distribution projects in Delhi and Mumbai.
The minister said the government was setting up a training institute exclusively for the petroleum sector. The new institute – Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology – will come up in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.
"This institute will serve the needs of the petroleum sector both in India and abroad and will be partially funded by OIDB," Deora added.
He said the National Gas Hydrate Programme was recently launched to address the country's enormous demand for energy.
"So far an amount of about Rs.200 crore (Rs.2 billion) has been incurred and large eastern and western offshore areas of the country are being studied for identification of gas hydrates."