New Delhi : The government seeks to make exorbitant profits by selling crude stored in strategic oil reserves. The central govt will sell for 80 dollars the crude it purchased at 12 dollars, explaining the lucrativeness as sale for commercial use.
The real aim is to makeup loss incurred on recently reduced duty on petrol and diesel prices. As per data released by ISPRL(Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Ltd), 3 lakh tonnes of oil was sold from SPR(Strategic Petroleum Reserve) site in Mangluru. 1.5 lakh tones of oil was sold to Hindustan Petroleum (HP). Another 4.5 lakh tonnes of crude is slated to be offloaded similarly from Mangluru site in the month of December. The government-owned ISPRL has storage sites in Vishakapattanam, Mangluru, and Patoor – each of which is responsible for maintaining individual reserves. Following pandemic, in months of April and May of last year, crude prices plummeted to 20 dollars a barrel and the Petroleum Ministry admits to making gains of Rs 5000 crores by way of imports then. The reserve oils now up for sale is stock purchased at that time.
ISPRL has two storage sites in Mangaluru each with 7.5 lakh tonnes capacity. Of these, one reserve storage was handed to Abu Dhabi in 2019, laying bare the government’s profit motive. The current sales are, in reality, aimed to rake up 20 percent in profits. Also rented out are 30 percent of the space at SPRs to strike further gains. Even so, propaganda emanating from certain quarters at the centre claims that the current move is aimed to flush crude into markets so as to bring bring down the price of oil for consumers.
Incidetally, on coming to power the second time, Modi government also took over reserve monies maintained by the Reserve Bank.
