New Delhi, June 12 (IANS) Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, on Thursday said that over the last 11 years, India’s oil and gas sector has expanded steadily, from building modern refineries and pipelines to securing reserves and promoting cleaner fuels as part of the infrastructure revolution that is taking place in the country.

The minister said, “Infrastructure has been central to India’s growth story under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and these efforts in the oil and gas sector have strengthened the country’s energy security and laid the foundation for a self-sufficient future.”

Highlighting the infrastructure milestones in the oil and gas sector, Puri said that the country now has 23 modern operational refineries with a total capacity of 257 million metric tonnes per annum to produce petroleum products such as petrol, diesel, jet fuel and LPG

The Piped Natural Gas (PNG) infrastructure that provides green cooking fuel to household kitchens in the country has been expanded to cover 733 districts across the country.

Besides, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for fuelling vehicles is being provided across 8,000 retail stations to consumers nationwide.

The minister also underlined that E20 ethanol blended petrol was now being made available for vehicles at all the retail outlets nationwide.

He further stated that the Ministry’s Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) initiatives have resulted in the setting up of 106 plants with the combined capacity of 625 TPD.

The minister also highlighted the ministry’s initiative in setting up storage facilities for strategic petroleum reserves, on which the country can fall back in times of emergency and which assume importance during times of geopolitical uncertainty.

These reserves can also be dipped into at times when global prices skyrocket to provide a cushion to the national oil companies.

The minister mentioned that the storage capacity at Pudur is 2.25 million metric tonnes (MMT), the Visakhaptnam facility has the capacity to store 1.33 MMT of crude oil while Mangalore has a storage capacity of 1.5 MMT.

Besides, another strategic reserve facility is being built at Chandikhol, which is also on the sea coast.

He also underscored that the public sector oil marketing companies have set up six skill development institutions which have already succeeded in skilling as many as 16,000 professionals so far.

–IANS

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