For the past three months, there has been no shortage of tension between India and Saudi Arabia in the relationship between the price of crude oil.
Recently, India’s Oil and Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan objected to the statement of Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Abdul Aziz bin Salman Al Saud,
in which he had said that India should reduce its crude oil prices. Use the oil reserve, which he had bought last year, amidst the falling prices of oil and accumulated it.
Dharmendra Pradhan commented on the statement of Saudi Arabian oil minister that this statement is not diplomatically correct. He said, “I disagree with such an approach. Certainly India has its own strategy for the use of reserve oil. We are conscious of our interests.”
We will look at the impact of this tension on India-Saudi Arabia relations. Later, let’s first look at how much oil reserves India has and when to use this reserves. How can it be done?
India’s oil reserves
In the Rajya Sabha last month, Dharmendra Pradhan said in a written statement that the Government of India took full advantage of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in April / May 2020 last year (after the epidemic and lockdown started) to take the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to full capacity Is filled, which has saved about Rs. 5,000 crores.
Actually, the responsibility of the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL), a department of the Government of India, is to increase the oil reserves. This department has so far created close to 5.33 million metric tonnes reserves in three places. It has been deposited under the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. These reserve reserves will be enough for about 10 days according to the daily consumption of India. These stores are in Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur.
The minister also said in his statement that the amount of strategic reserve reserves held by private companies will last 64.5 days according to the country’s requirement. That is, if for some reason India cannot import oil, then its entire reserves can be used for 74 days.
Dharmendra Pradhan said that in the second phase,
Strategic reserves of 4 million metric tons at Chandikhol in Odisha and 2.5 million metric tons at Padur in Karnataka are being prepared in the second phase,
to increase the strategic stock of oil, which can be used for 12 days. can be done
Skyrocketing oil prices in india
Four months ago, OPEC, an organization of oil producing countries, cut production to control the rapidly falling prices of crude oil in international markets since March last year. Saudi Arabia itself also reduced production. Due to this, the price of petrol started increasing again.
Rising prices of petrol and diesel have become a controversial issue in India. On Wednesday, the most expensive petrol was found in Jabalpur and the price was Rs 98.57 per liter.
Petrol and diesel prices in India are linked to international market prices. This means that if the price of oil decreases or increases in the international market, then similar fluctuations should be seen in India.
But last year, ordinary consumers did not benefit from the falling prices of oil, because the Modi government increased excise duty twice.
Former chairman of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) RS Sharma says, “When this government came to power in 2014,
the price of oil was $ 106 per barrel. Since then prices have been coming down. Our PM Also jokingly said that I am lucky that since I came to power,
the oil rates are going down. At that time the price of petrol was Rs 72 per liter. The government did not allow the price in India to be reduced, instead the government Increased excise duty. “
