Latest news with #DFRs
Mint
26-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Six more locations for monster reserves to stock up crude oil for India
India is doubling down to build new strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) at six proposed locations in the quest for energy security in a volatile world, two people aware of the development said. Emergency oil reserves that are stocked up while prices are low and released at times of exigencies are crucial for the world's third-largest energy consumer, which imports 85% of its crude requirements. The government has asked state-run Engineers India Ltd (EIL) to make detailed feasibility reports (DFRs) to build such new reserves at six locations, two people aware of the development said. Of these, one is proposed to be at the Mangalore Special Economic Zone in Karnataka and the other at salt caverns in Rajasthan's Bikaner. State-owned EIL, an engineering and consultancy firm focusing on the energy sector, is expected to submit its reports by the end of the year. 'EIL is doing DFR in six locations, which are close to the coast and refineries; including in Mangalore SEZ, and also salt caverns in Bikaner for strategic purposes. They haven't finalized it, with the study expected to be completed by the end of this year. The plan is to take India's reserve capacity to 90 days. That's the basic requirement," said one of the two people cited above requesting anonymity. Vital reserves During the West Asia conflict, Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in its territorial waters, through which a fifth of the world's oil cargoes pass. With India consuming 5.5 million barrels of crude oil per day (mbpd), the threat turned the spotlight on 1.5-2 mbpd oil that heads for India through this vital choke point, highlighting the need for an effective SPR programme. 'The information sought is confidential in nature, considering present environment," ISPRL's chief executive officer and managing director L.R. Jain said in an emailed reply to a query. An EIL spokesperson in an emailed response said, 'Above Information is correct to our knowledge. Please note that as part of Phase 1, a capacity of 5.33 mmt of capacity was added."'Feasibility is under advance stage of finalization," the EIL spokesperson added. Queries sent to a spokesperson of India's petroleum and natural gas ministry on late Tuesday remained unanswered. Conflict concerns SPRs are built underground in strategically chosen locations, often near refineries and ports, like rock caverns or salt caverns. India has been stocking up oil ever since opening its first SPR in Visakhapatanam a decade ago; however, the latest push comes against the backdrop of a 10-day conflict in West Asia, home to some of the world's biggest oil fields, exposing vulnerabilities on the energy front. Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL), a state-run company, has built reserves totalling 5.33 million metric tonne (mmt) at Vishakhapatnam (1.33 mmt), Mangaluru (1.5 mmt) and Padur (2.5 mmt). The UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (Adnoc) has partnered with India's strategic crude oil reserve programme, leasing capacity from the reserves. The government is also looking to secure participation from more global energy majors. In the second phase, SPRs of 6.5 mmt are planned in a public-private partnership mode, at Chandikhol in Odisha (4 mmt) and Padur in Karnataka (2.5 mmt). The six new locations being explored will be in addition to these. India currently has emergency reserves of crude oil and petroleum products equivalent to 77 days of net imports. This includes the capacity at SPRs, as well as the stocks maintained by state-run oil companies. For comparison, member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) maintain emergency stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net imports. This assumes significance for India given its dependence on imported crude, and the fact that oil comprises about 30% of its total imports. In such a scenario, volatility and higher prices impact the country's trade deficit, current deficit and eventually, economic growth. Filling supply gaps India's current SPR capacity of 5.3 million tonnes is enough to meet just 9.5 days of its oil needs. According to data from the standing committee report on petroleum and natural gas submitted to the parliament in December 2024, 3.6 million tonne capacity was filled till October 2024. Crude oil approached nearly $80 per barrel as the Israel-Iran conflict broke out, before easing on Tuesday after the rivals reached a ceasefire. At the time of writing, the August contract of Brent on the Intercontinental Exchange was trading at $67.74 per barrel, higher by 0.92% from its previous close. Similarly, the August contract of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) on the NYMEX rose 0.87% to 64.93 per barrel. Prashant Vasisht, senior vice-president and co-group head, corporate rating at Icra Ltd said: "Given that India does not have a significant domestic production so far, having strategic reserves for emergency situations is important. Because, a geopolitical crisis may stretch from a few days to months, and India needs to ensure that any supply gap can be immediately filled to meet the demand for that period." He added that even considering energy transition, India's demand for petroleum products like petrol and diesel will continue to grow for at least the next 15 years. "So, the expansion of strategic reserve capacity is critical for India," Vasisht added. Amit Kumar, Partner and Leader, Energy & Renewables at Grant Thornton Bharat said, "India needs to increase its strategic reserves significantly to reach the targeted 90 days of storage, and to ensure that in case of a crisis, the reserves can be used. However, these reserves come with huge investment requirements, and the government may also look at getting in global players, which would help in hedging their investments." Expenditure According to industry estimates, building reserves of 1 mt requires capital expenditure of ₹2,500 crore. In November 2021, India agreed to release 5 million barrels from its reserves to cool global crude oil prices, in coordination with other major oil consumers including the US, China, Japan and South Korea. Also, India bought oil at $19 a barrel in 2020 to fill its reserves, and in the process, saved $685.11 million. 'Government and OMCs (oil marketing companies) evaluate, from time to time, the possibility of augmentation of storage capacities based on technical and commercial feasibility. Assessment of new sites for establishing additional petroleum reserves is a continuous process," minister of state (MoS) in petroleum and natural gas ministry Suresh Gopi informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on 20 March, according to a government statement. India imports around 244 million tonnes of crude oil annually, accounting for over 85% of its total crude oil requirement. It has the option to source crude oil from 39 countries. In the backdrop of the West Asia crisis, New Delhi evolved an oil sourcing strategy that involves bypassing the Strait of Hormuz via two pipelines; tapping into the global reserves of Adnoc and Saudi Aramco; and significantly increasing imports from the US, as reported by Mint earlier. The two pipelines, which run east to west across the Arabian peninsula, was planned to be tapped if Iran closes the Strait. The first is Adnoc-operated 360-km Habshan-Fujairah strategic oil pipeline with a 1.5 million barrels per day (mbpd) capacity that opens to the Gulf of Oman; and the Saudi Aramco-operated 1,200-km East-West crude oil pipeline with a 5 mbpd capacity that offers access to the Red Sea.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The NYPD Is Sending Drones to the Sites of 9-1-1 Calls
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is now sending drones out on 9-1-1 calls to do the business that their Candy Crush-addicted human officers are too busy to tackle — and surveilling everyone in sight while they do it. As the cybersecurity news site The Record reports, these "drones as first responders" — or DFRs, as the NYPD calls them — can fly up to 45 miles per hour, filming everything on the block with telephoto cameras that can, per manufacturer Skydio, identify faces and license plates from nearly a mile away. Launched last year as part of embattled mayor Eric Adams' quest to shove technology into everything regardless of public opinion, these drones were initially only going to respond to "select priority public safety calls," according to a press release issued last November that formally announced the program. As The Record notes, however, the NYPD's definition of "select priority" seems awfully vague — and it doesn't actually report how many drones are deployed on police calls, either. Prior to the program's official launch, the department revealed that they planned to use drones to monitor house parties that receive noise complaints over Labor Day Weekend in 2023, which also coincides with J'Ouvert festivities that take place in New York's Caribbean communities. In fact, that festival was cited specifically by a former NYPD commissioner who called the drones a "wonderful thing." If shelling out for party-surveilling drones seems to you like a misuse of taxpayer funds, you're not alone. In an interview with The Guardian in 2023, a senior strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union called the NYPD's drone usage "dystopian" and a form of "racialized discrimination." Now that their use has been expanded to do more than just allowing cops to be remote spectators at peoples' backyard parties, those epithets feel prescient. Because the US Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement can legally surveil anyone's outdoor property without a warrant via drone, the NYPD has followed suit. Per NYPD policy, drones aren't allowed to operate inside a property warrantless, but outside doesn't count, basically. As constitutional rights lawyer Sidney Thaxter told The Record, that means the NYPD could film someone in their backyard — and because the department's Skydio drones are equipped with telephoto lenses, they could do so from a high enough altitude that anyone who wasn't looking at the sky wouldn't notice the lurking aircraft. "They can set a drone up in the air far enough away that you can't hear it," Thaxter said, "and they can zoom in and can literally see what's in your hands." While we don't know exactly how often the NYPD is using their drones, the department has already bragged about deploying them to help them surveil protests and the people demonstrating at them in recent years. After protests erupted across the city in response to the conflict in Gaza, police boasted to the press that they'd used drones 13 times to make a whopping 239 arrests — all in a single week, and all in Brooklyn. "We got the whole thing on video," assistant NYPD commissioner Kaz Daughtry said, referring to pro-Palestinian protesters who were caught on video throwing eggs and bottles at cops during an October 2021 demonstration in South Brooklyn. "We'll be turning that evidence over to the Brooklyn DA's office to help enhance the arrests." Amid a larger culture of crackdowns on freedom of speech in New York and around the country, this kind of drone use does indeed feel dystopian — or, as Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project put it to The Record, as if the NYPD was treating "Black Mirror" as an "instruction manual." More on NYPD tech: AI Completely Failed to Catch CEO Killer, With Cops Instead Relying on Random McDonald's Employee
