India in Talks to Secure Strategic Oil-Reserve Supplies

India is in talks with potential partners on supplying oil for its planned strategic petroleum reserve, the country's oil minister said Thursday.

India is seeking overseas partners from both the public and private sectors, oil minister Veerappa Moily said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Seoul . He didn't name the parties or give a target date for first deliveries.

The cost of filling the reserves will be a heavy burden for India , given the rupee's recent sharp fall against the dollar, the currency in which oil is priced.

Construction work on the initial three storage centers near the southern Indian cities of Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur is due to be completed in the first half of 2014, with the cost excluding the oil expected to be more than $600 million.

In late 2011, India 's former Oil Secretary G.C. Chaturvedi said the first-stage tanks would hold some 5.33 million tons of crude oil, equivalent to 39 million barrels. Additional tanks would bring India 's SPR capacity to 132 million barrels by 2020.

He said India was studying various models for partnerships, including allowing partners to store oil and withdraw it for selling along with guarantees they would replace it in times of need.

That model is similar to what is being done in Japan and South Korea .

On Wednesday, Iraq Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said an initial agreement will be signed with South Korea to store about 4 million barrels of oil in the North Asian country, in what will be the latest of a string of similar arrangements between Seoul and oil producers.

India imports 78% of its crude oil needs, while South Korea relies almost entirely on imports.