EXCLUSIVE: India's strategic oil reserves cover less than 10 days

An RTI response accessed by India Today from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas states that India’s strategic crude oil reserves can meet “for about 9.5 days of crude oil requirement” in case of disruption of imports.

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The RTI reply notes that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) programme was first approved on January 7, 2004, and Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL)—Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited—was set up on June 16, 2004 to implement it.

At present, India has a total SPR storage capacity of 5.33 million metric tonnes (MMT) across three locations - Visakhapatnam (1.33 MMT), Mangaluru (1.5 MMT), and Padur (2.5 MMT).

In a reply in the Rajya Sabha dated March 23, 2026, the government stated that “ISPRL has around 3.372 MMT of crude stock available which is around 64 % of the total storage capacity.” It further said, “The actual reserve is a dynamic number depending on the stocks and actual consumption, both of which are not static.”

The RTI response also confirms that in July 2021, the government approved the expansion of the SPR network. Two additional facilities are planned - Chandikhol (Odisha) with 4 MMT capacity and an additional 2.5 MMT at Padur (Karnataka) -taking the total planned expansion to 6.5 MMT, to be developed under a public-private partnership model.