Iran to Build Underground Oil Reserves
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran plans to embark on a project in cooperation with a foreign company to build strategic underground reserves to store crude oil, an official announced.
The project will be implemented near a Persian Gulf littoral city at a distance of 100 kilometers from the coast, Managing Director of Iranian Oil Terminals Company (IOTC) Pirouz Mousavi said Friday at a press conference on the sidelines of a major oil exhibition in Tehran.
According to the official, the reserves are planned to have a capacity of 10 million barrels.
Many countries in the world have invested billions of dollars to develop facilities for storing enormous stockpiles of oil in secure caverns and tanks.
The idea was developed by the US 40 years ago. Across four secure sites in unassuming locations in the US lies nearly 700 million barrels of oil, buried underground. A total of 60 subterranean caverns, carved into rock salt beneath the surface, constitute the US’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
The plan was devised after the energy crisis of 1973 that emerged when Arab oil exporters cut off the West from their supplies. The world was so dependent on oil from the Middle East then that prices skyrocketed and petrol was soon rationed at US gas stations.
