INDIAN OIL CORPORATION

Indian Oil Corporation is an Indian public-sector petroleum company. It is India’s largest commercial enterprise, ranking 116th on the Fortune Global 500 listing (2008). It began operation in 1959 as Indian Oil Company Ltd. The Indian Oil Corporation was formed in 1964, with the merger of Indian Refineries Ltd. Indian Oil and its subsidiaries account for a 47% share in the petroleum products market, 40% share in refining capacity and 67% downstream sector pipelines capacity in India. The Indian Oil Group of Companies owns and operates 10 of India's 19 refineries with a combined refining capacity of 60.2 million metric tons per year.

Indian Oil operates the largest and the widest network of fuel stations in the country, numbering about 17606 (15557 regular ROs & 2049 Kissan Sewa Kendra). It has also started Auto LPG Dispensing Stations (ALDS). It reaches Indane cooking gas to over 47.5 million households through a network of 4,990 Indian distributors.

In addition, Indian Oil's Research and Development Center (R&D) at Faridabad supports, develops and provides the necessary technology solutions to the operating divisions of the corporation and its customers within the country and abroad. Subsequently, IndianOil Technologies Limited - a wholly owned subsidiary, was set up in 2003, with a vision to market the technologies developed at IndianOil's Research and Development Center. It has been modeled on the R&D marketing arms of Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum.

Global strategic petroleum reserves ("GSPR") refer to crude oil inventories (or stockpiles) held by the government of a particular country, as well as private industry, for the purpose of providing economic and national security during an energy crisis. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, approximately 4.1 billion barrels (650,000,000 m3) of oil are held in strategic reserves, of which 1.4 billion is government-controlled. The remainder is held by private industry.

At the moment the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one of the largest strategic reserves, with much of the remainder held by the other 26 members of the International Energy Agency. Recently, other non-IEA countries have begun creating their own strategic petroleum reserves, with China being the largest of these new reserves. Since current consumption levels are neighboring 0.1 billion barrels/day, in the case of a dramatic worldwide drop in oil field output as suggested by some peak oil analysts, the strategic petroleum reserves are unlikely to last for more than a few months.

International Energy Agency reserves : - According to a March 2001 agreement, all 28 members of the International Energy Agency must have a strategic petroleum reserve equal to 90 days of prior year's net oil imports for their respective country. Only net-exporter members of the IEA are exempt from the reserve requirement. The exempt countries are Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom. However, Denmark and the UK have both recently created strategic reserves due to their requirements as European Union members.