UAE government-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is ready to strengthen its role in India’s energy sector, with signing of agreements with Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd. (ISPRL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) at the sidelines of a bilateral summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi presently.
The ADNOC-ISPRL memorandum of understanding covers potential crude oil storage of up to 30-mn barrels across India’s strategic petroleum reserve network, broadening ADNOC’s current presence at Mangalore to facilities at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Chandikhol in Odisha. The agreement also opens the door to ADNOC conserving dedicated Indian strategic crude reserves at Fujairah within the UAE — a splendid structural shift that could place part of India’s reserve capacity on foreign soil. LNG and LPG storage collaboration in India is also covered under the same MoU.
ADNOC first entered India’s strategic reserve system in 2018, while it became the primary foreign company to store crude in the nation’s underground caverns, occupying the 750-tmt Cavern-A facility at Mangalore under a 2017 deal with ISPRL. India recently holds around 5.33-mn metric tons of strategic petroleum reserve capacity at Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur, giving kind of 9.5 days of crude cover. Two additional facilities — 4-mmt at Chandikhol and 2.5-mmt at Padur — had been accepted in 2021, with construction at Padur awarded in October 2025.
Integrated with storage facilities operated by oil marketing corporations, the nation’s total crude oil and petroleum storage capacity stands at round 74 days.
A separate MoU between ADNOC and IOC will expand LPG supply and trading, such as through ADNOC Global Trading, constructing on a term supply contract in place since 2023 and potentially main to an long-term sale and purchase agreement.
The UAE also declared a $5-bn investment commitment in India at the summit. The two nations are targeting $200-bn in bilateral trade by 2032 under a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement that came into force in 2022.
