The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has dispatched the first ship carrying crude oil to India’s strategic oil reserve near the southern city of Mangalore.

India’s Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is in Abu Dhabi to attend Adnoc’s Downstream Investment Forum, flagged off the vessel carrying 2 million barrels of oil, along with Adnoc Group CEO Dr Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber in a ceremony on 12 May.

The cargo is the first under an agreement between Adnoc and the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL), an Indian government-owned company, to store 5.86 million barrels of strategic crude oil from Adnoc at the Mangalore storage complex along the Arabian Sea coast.

The two sides had signed an initial agreement to set up the strategic crude storage project in January 2017, and affirmed it by a final agreement in February this year.

Pradhan had said at the time that he hopes the first ship to set sail for India in May.

Indian energy demand is forecast, by the International Energy Agency (IEA), to grow by more than any other country in the period to 2040. Indian energy consumption is expected to more than double by 2040, accounting for 25 per cent of the rise in global energy, and the largest absolute growth in oil consumption.

India is 82 per cent dependent on imports to meet its crude oil needs, 8 per cent of which is supplied by the UAE.