India has ample reserves of crude at its disposal: Dharmendra Pradhan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 8

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said India was currently holding 18 per cent of the annual requirement of energy, thus indicating that the government has ensured ample reserves of crude at its disposal to easily meet all requirements in the near future.

“This is the maximum capacity we could hold and we are holding that,” Pradhan told Daniel Yergin, author and one of the world’s noted authority on the politics of oil.

Pradhan said India’s strategic storage capacity of 53 lakh tones would be full by mid-May. Apart from that, oil companies have booked and paid for 70 lakh metric tons of floating oil in their contracts and then there is domestic online capacity in crude oil or products of around 250 lakh metric tons.

Though India has been quick to seize on the opportunity provided by rock-bottom crude prices due to oversupply, Pradhan backed a reasonable price.

“Very low prices are not the answer. Reasonable prices are the answers. Prices should give some space to the producer countries. It should be profitable for them. It should be viable for them,” Pradhan reasoned.

The minister said post-COVID, the government planned to move towards a new gas policy and a new tariff policy.

“We are planning for a gas exchange very soon and we will be liberalising our distribution mechanisms. We are very much focused, after relaxing of this lockdown…on the job of implementing the city gas distribution network expansion,” he told Yergin.

The minister hopes that this initiative will create a long-term futuristic energy infrastructure in most of the country and enable employment generation. “This is a perfect plan for our gas expansion story,” he said.

Pradhan said all the major steel plants and blast furnaces were functioning but there was low demand leading to an increasing stockpile. “But the way we are planning for the future roadmap – a lot of roads, a lot of value-added activities, a lot of infrastructure plans on the roadmap – in all of these areas steel will be required,” Pradhan hoped.