Oil reserves in salt caverns

Why in news?

• Government-owned engineering consultancy firm Engineers India is studying the prospects and feasibility of developing salt cavern-based strategic oil reserves in Rajasthan.
• If the idea comes to fruition, India could get its first salt cavern-based oil storage facility

About India’s present strategic oil reserves:

• India currently has an SPR capacity of 5.33 million tonnes, or around 39 million barrels of crude. This can meet around 9.5 days of demand.
• India’s strategic oil reserves come under the Petroleum Ministry’s Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve (ISPRL).
• EIL was instrumental in setting up the country’s existing SPR as the project management consultant.
• The country’s three existing strategic oil storage facilities at Mangaluru and Padur in Karnataka, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh are made up of excavated rock caverns.

Salt cavern-based reserves v/s rock cavern-based reserves:

• Rock cavern-based reserves:
  • It is developed by excavation and development process is complex, labour and cost-intensive
  • Compared to Salt based reserves these are high oil absorbent and it cannot be created and operated entirely from the surface.
• Salt cavern-based reserves:
  • It is developed by solution mining (pumping water into geological formations with large salt deposits to dissolve the salt)
  • It’s development process is cheaper and less labour and cost-intensive
  • Other characteristics:      
    • Extremely low oil absorbency
    • Can be created and operated almost entirely from the surface.
    • Suitable for storing natural gas, compressed air and hydrogen.

Add ons:

• The entire SPR programme of the United States has so far been based on salt cavern-based storage facilities.
• The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest emergency oil storage, consists of four sites along the Gulf of Mexico coast in Texas and Louisiana.

PRACTICE QUESTION

Consider the following statements:

1. India’s current strategic petroleum reserve capacity can meet more than 100 days of demand

2. The country’s existing strategic oil storage facilities are made up of excavated rock caverns.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer