India has over 80 days of fuel storage capacity, says Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri
India has enough fuel reserves and storage capacity to cover more than 80 days of its requirements, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said in Kolkata on Monday. He was speaking at the curtain raiser for India Energy Week 2027, the country's flagship energy conference.
"The number of refineries has grown, import terminals have grown and I am sometimes asked why isn't the country's SPR bigger?" Mr Puri said, referring to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. "Please combine everything — we have more than eighty plus days [worth] of capacity to store."
India's strategic petroleum reserves are government-held emergency stockpiles of crude oil, built and managed by the state-owned Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd in underground rock caverns in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. They are designed to shield the country from global supply shocks. Alongside these, India holds commercial storage at ports and inventory maintained by refineries.
The minister's figure appeared to combine all of these, rather than the strategic reserve alone. He did not provide a breakdown of crude oil against refined products, or of government-held against privately held stocks.
Storage capacity matters because India imports more than 85 per cent of the crude oil it processes. Bigger reserves give the world's third-largest energy consumer more room to absorb price spikes and disruptions to shipping routes.
For comparison, members of the International Energy Agency, a grouping of major oil-consuming nations, are required to hold emergency stocks equal to at least 90 days of net imports. India is not a member of the agency but is an association country.
Mr Puri said India was no longer only a large buyer of energy but was also helping to shape global policy. "Today, India is not only a major centre for energy consumption — it is the third-largest consumer, fourth-largest refining centre — but [also] shaping the global energy conversation," he said.
He pointed to India's presidency of the BRICS forum, along with its role in initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance and the Global Biofuels Alliance, as evidence of that widening role.
Successive governments have discussed expanding India's strategic storage, with additional sites proposed in Odisha and Karnataka, though the pace of construction has been debated by energy analysts.
India Energy Week 2027 will be held from January 28 to 31 in Kolkata. The annual event brings together policymakers, industry executives and researchers from across the energy sector.
The reporter was in Kolkata at the invitation of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
