A delegation from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Indian officials celebrated on Monday the unloading of the first crude cargo destined to the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves.
The first cargo of 2 million barrels of crude oil left Abu Dhabi earlier this month, in a ceremony attended by Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of State and Adnoc Group chief executive and Dharmendra Pradhan, Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The cargo, which was unloaded in the Karnataka oil storage facility in Mangalore, is the first in an agreement between Adnoc and ISPRL, an Indian government company mandated to store oil for strategic needs that will see a total of 5.86 million barrels of Adnoc crude oil stockpiled there.
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“Adnoc is already a trusted and reliable supplier of crude oil and refined products to many customers and partners in India, and we are proud to deepen this longstanding relationship through another important and strategic collaboration,” said Abdulla Al Dhaheri, Adnoc’s Director of Marketing, Sales and Trading in a statement.
The strategic reserve agreement comes on the heels of an announcement in February that an Indian consortium made up of ONGC Videsh, Indian Oil Co and Bharat Petro Resources was awarded a 10 per cent interest in Abu Dhabi’s new offshore Lower Zakum concession.
India currently imports 8 per cent of its oil needs from the UAE, which intends to use the storage facilities in Mangalore to meet market demand in Asia as a whole.