RoydadNaft –  India has issued a tender to private companies to build and operate a new storage site for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of the world’s third-largest crude oil importer.

Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL), the state firm managing India’s government petroleum inventories, has issued a tender notice to private firms inviting them to bid for a storage site of 2.5 million metric tons at Padur for “commercial cum strategic petroleum reserves,” according to a tender notice seen by Reuters.

The storage site would include a single point mooring and associated infrastructure on a “design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis,” ISPRL said in the tender.

Currently, India’s underground Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage has a total capacity of 5.33 million metric tons of crude oil, equal to only 39 million barrels of crude oil, or eight days’ worth of India’s oil consumption.

The storage sites are located in Vishakhapatnam in the state of Andhra Pradesh, and Mangaluru and Padur in the state of Karnataka.

Now India is looking to have another storage site at Padur.

The country is also considering the building of a larger, 4.4-million-ton SPR site at Chandikhol, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.

Private companies, including Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), have been using and storing in recent years petroleum at the existing SPR sites.

With spiking petroleum demand and about 85% of its crude coming from imports, India is now looking to expand its SPR storage sites.

Last year, India surpassed China as the world’s biggest oil demand growth driver, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for December.

India is expected to account for 25% of global oil demand growth this year, the EIA reckons. In 2024, Indian oil consumption growth was estimated at around 220,000 barrels per day (bpd), compared to China’s 90,000 bpd growth.

In 2025, Indian oil demand is set to grow by 330,000 bpd. China will see a higher growth rate next year compared to this year’s weaker-than-expected increase. Yet, at 250,000 bpd growth in 2025, China will still lag India’s consumption increase, according to the EIA.