Mangaluru : Crude storage in the underground rock cavern of the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd. (ISPRL) for energy security began here on Wednesday.

The pumping of 0.26 million metric tonne (MMT) crude received from Iran for STORING at the cavern at Permude village began from the Single Point Mooring Booster Pumping Station of the Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) at Tannirbhavi in the premises of the New Mangalore Port. Very Large Crude Carrier had brought the crude to the port.

Speaking to media persons on the occasion Rajan K Pillai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, ISPRL, said that the crude is being stored now for the testing purpose.

The cavern with two chambers has the capacity to STORE total 1.5 MMT of crude. Each chamber can store 0.75 MMT of crude.

He said that if each chamber was to be filled it required three parcels of crude of the quantity received on Wednesday. The second parcel of the crude would arrive at the port on October 24 and the third one in the third week of November.

It required 40 hours to 44 hours to pump the crude received on Wednesday completely to the cavern. About 10,000 litres could be pumped per an hour.

H Kumar, Managing Director, MRPL said that when the cavern would be full the storage would be enough to meet the exclusive requirement of the MRPL for 36 days.

Mr. Pillai said that another underground rock cavern being constructed at Padur in Udupi district would be completed by this year end. It has the STORING capacity of 2.5 MMT. This cavern is being inter-linked through an underground pipeline now with the one at Permude.

Another underground rock cavern at Visakhapatnam having a capacity to store 1.33 MMT of crude has already been commissioned, he said.

The three caverns together have a storage capacity of five MMT. This storage would be enough to meet the energy security of the country for 13 days during emergency.

“These strategic storages will be in addition to the existing storages of crude oil and petroleum products with the oil companies and would serve as a cushion during any external supply disruptions,” he said.

Nalin Kumar Kateel, Member of Parliament, Ganesh Karnik, MLC, B A Mohiuddin Bava, MLA, Mangaluru City North were present on the occasion. (EOM)