The centre has approved ₹4,687 crore in interest subsidies for eligible ethanol projects under key support schemes, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Suresh Gopi told Parliament on Monday.
The centre has released ₹2,075 crore to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) since 2022-23, Gopi stated in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.
The funding targets to boost investment in ethanol production capacity, advancing India’s ethanol blending programme and advancing the country's biofuel infrastructure.
Furthermore, Gopi informed the Rajya Sabha that half of ONGC’s new 1.75 million tonne petroleum storage facility in Mangaluru will be allotted to India’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), while the rest will be dedicated to commercial use.
He also said that that government has set up Phase-I strategic petroleum reserve facilities with a combined capacity of 5.33 million tonnes of crude oil at Visakhapatnam (1.33 million tonnes), Mangaluru (1.5 million tonnes) and Padur in Karnataka (2.5 million tonnes) under Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL).
Gopi also mentioned that apart from these underground reserves, India holds crude oil and refined product storage across offshore units, refineries, terminals, and a 35,000+ km pipeline network, which is sufficient to provide 74 days of net crude oil import requirements.
