Under Phase I of strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) programme, Government of India, through its Special Purpose Vehicle, Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL), has established petroleum storage facilities with total capacity of 5.33 Million Metric Tonnes (MMT) at 3 locations, namely (i) Vishakhapatnam (1.33 MMT), (ii) Mangaluru (1.5 MMT) and (iii) Padur (2.5 MMT), and all the storage facilities have been filled with crude oil. The petroleum reserves established under Phase I are strategic in nature and the crude oil stored in these reserves will be used during an oil shortage event, as and when declared so by Government of India.

Under Phase II of the petroleum reserve programme, Government has given approval in July 2021 for establishing two additional commercial-cum-strategic facilities with total storage capacity of 6.5 MMT underground storages at Chandikhol (4 MMT) and Padur (2.5 MMT) on PPP mode.  The Request for Proposal for building these storage facilities is under finalization. An amount of INR 210 crore was allocatedin the budget of FY 2020-21under Phase II for land acquisition, and same has been disbursed to ISPRL.

As per the section 9(2) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, inclusion of excluded products in GST will require recommendation of the GST Council. So far, the GST Council has not made any recommendation for inclusion of petrol and diesel under GST.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Shri Rameswar Teli in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

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