India is in talks with Middle East producers to jointly set up crude oil storage facilities to secure supplies for Asia's third-largest consumer and an assured market for sellers, oil secretary R.S. Pandey said on Wednesday. The proposed plan could mirror South Korea's agreement with firms such as Algeria's Sonatrach, France's Total and Kuwait Petroleum Corp for joint stockpiling of crude.
"More storages of oil could be built jointly by consuming and producing nationss. We can have storage here, we are in talks with countries that are important to us," Pandey said at an industry event. He said India has raised this issue of setting up joint crude storage at bilateral meeting with oil producing countries. "At joint working groups meeting we discussed this with some Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait," Pandey said.