Petroleum Storage Licensing
Materials meeting the statutory definition are classified by flash point, and the class drives almost everything that follows — the licence form, the site requirements and the storage conditions.
Petroleum Class A
Below 23°CHexane, benzene, toluene, naphtha. The Inflammable Substance Act, 1952 also brings acetone, ethyl alcohol and methyl alcohol under the Petroleum Rules.
Petroleum Class B
23°C to below 65°CDiesel (HSD), kerosene (SKO) and mineral turpentine. Usually held as utility or captive fuel stock rather than process input.
Petroleum Class C
65°C to below 93°CFurnace oil and light diesel oil — typically boiler and thermic fluid heater feedstock.
PESO’s published list of petroleum requiring a licence includes benzene, toluene, hexane, xylene, styrene and naphtha alongside motor spirit, high speed diesel, aviation turbine fuel, superior kerosene, light diesel oil and furnace oil. Substances under the Inflammable Substance Act, 1952 — acetone, ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol and calcium carbide among them — also require a licence under the Petroleum Rules.
Read the definition, not the label. Some solvents commonly assumed to be covered fall outside the statutory definition, and some assumed to be exempt do not. Classification is the first task in any petroleum licensing exercise and the one most often skipped.
Electrical equipment installed in hazardous areas under the Petroleum Rules requires approval from the Chief Controller of Explosives, with zone classification determining which protection types are permitted. This is a separate approval track from the storage licence itself.
Who Needs a Petroleum Licence
Storage and distribution
- Bulk fuel storage installations and depots
- Petroleum product warehousing and transfer facilities
- Port-linked storage in the Dahej, Hazira and Kandla belt
- Businesses handling petroleum products in transport containers
Industrial users
- Chemical and pharma units holding Class A solvents in bulk
- Manufacturing sites with captive furnace oil or LDO for boilers and thermic fluid heaters
- Units with diesel storage for generators above the applicable threshold
- Solvent recovery and distillation operations
Applicability turns on the class, the quantity, the storage mode and the installation. A site holding a modest quantity in drums is not in the same position as one holding the same annual volume in a bulk tank.
On published quantity thresholds. Figures circulate widely on consultant pages and are frequently out of date. Verify any threshold against the current rules for your class and storage mode. We do not quote limits we have not confirmed.
Documents & Site Requirements
Petroleum applications are built around the tank schedule and the site drawing, with the remaining documents supporting them.
- Company constitution and incorporation documents, with authorisation for the signatory
- Land ownership, lease or plot allotment documents
- Site plan and key plan showing protected works within the relevant distance
- Layout drawing showing tank positions, bunding, pump house and pipe routes
- Tank schedule: capacity, dimensions, construction and class of product
- Fabrication and test certificates for tanks and pipework
- Electrical area classification and equipment approval status
- Safety and test certificates by a recognised competent person
- Existing licence with approved drawing, for renewal or amendment
Site requirements — distances, bunding capacity, separation and access — vary by class and quantity and are established against the rules for the specific case. They are not usefully stated as universal figures.
Storage Tank & Safety Compliance
Tank installations attract detailed scrutiny because so much of the risk sits in construction and layout rather than operation.
- Tank construction and testing. Specification, fabrication records and test certificates appropriate to the product class.
- Bunding. Capacity relative to the tankage served, construction, and drainage arrangements.
- Separation. Between tanks, and between tank areas holding different classes.
- Fittings. Vents, flame arrestors, level indication and earthing appropriate to the class.
- Loading and unloading. Arrangements, bonding and the area classification around them.
- Fire protection. Provisions matched to the product and quantity, and reachable in practice.
Underground and above-ground installations are treated differently, and converting from one to the other is a licensing change rather than a maintenance decision.
Inspection & Approval
PESO has moved to a paperless process, with applications routed through the National Single Window System. PESO’s published document on disposal timelines states that online applications are auto-inwarded four times a day and are to be processed within 21 days. Read that figure for what it is — a departmental processing timeline, not a promise of when your licence arrives. Elapsed time is governed almost entirely by how often the file goes back for clarification.
Where inspection applies, the site is examined against the submitted drawing and tank schedule. The recurring problems:
- A tank or vessel relocated during construction, never reflected in the approved drawing
- Stored quantities that have crept above the licensed figure
- Safety fittings replaced with a different make or specification
- Electrical equipment in a classified area whose approval status nobody has checked
- Distances on the drawing that do not survive a tape measure
- A site team that has never seen the drawing filed on their behalf
What a consultant can and cannot do. We prepare the file, brief your site team and draft replies to departmental observations. We have no role in how an inspection is conducted and no influence over its outcome. A One Consultant is a private consultancy — not a government body, and not appointed or authorised by one. Our practice does not extend to GPCB, CPCB or Drug Department matters.
Renewal & Amendments
Validity periods and renewal cut-off dates are set by the applicable rules and differ between licence types. Check your licence document rather than assuming a common period. As a documented comparison, under the SMPV(U) Rules licences run for a maximum of three years ending 31st March with renewal applications due at the renewing office by 2nd March of the expiry year — the petroleum position is governed by its own rules and should be read from your licence.
Amendment becomes relevant when tankage is added or removed, capacity changes, a different class of product is introduced into an existing installation, the layout is modified, or the company name, constitution or occupancy changes.
The most common avoidable problem is a licensed quantity that no longer matches the installed tankage — usually because a tank was added between renewals and never reflected in an amendment.
Gujarat Industrial Support
Petroleum licensing in Gujarat concentrates in two patterns. Coastal and port-linked bulk storage around Dahej, Hazira and the Kandla–Mundra belt, where installations are large and several rule sets often apply to one site. And industrial captive storage across the chemical and pharma estates — Ankleshwar, Panoli, Vapi, Nandesari, Vadodara and Sachin GIDC — where the licence attaches to solvent tankage or boiler fuel rather than to a fuel business.
Our office is at GIDC Char Rasta in Vapi and we attend sites across the South Gujarat belt. A One Consultant has worked on petroleum, solvent and industrial licensing since 1999. For Gujarat applicants the PESO field office is the Vadodara Circle Office.
Petroleum License FAQs
What counts as petroleum under the Petroleum Act?
The Act defines petroleum as any liquid hydrocarbon or mixture of hydrocarbons, and any inflammable mixture containing a liquid hydrocarbon. It is a statutory definition rather than a description of fuel, which is why solvents held at chemical and pharma plants frequently fall within it.
What are Petroleum Class A, B and C?
Classification is by flash point. Class A is below 23°C, Class B is 23°C to below 65°C, and Class C is 65°C to below 93°C. The class determines the licence form and the storage requirements that follow.
Does captive diesel storage for a generator need a licence?
It depends on the quantity held and the storage arrangement. Diesel is Class B, and thresholds differ by class and storage mode. Verify the current position against the rules rather than relying on figures published on consultant pages, which are often out of date.
Our plant stores toluene and hexane. Is that a petroleum licence?
Both appear on PESO’s published list of petroleum requiring a licence, and both are Class A by flash point. Whether a licence is required in your case depends additionally on quantity, storage mode and installation, so the material list is the starting point rather than the conclusion.
What documents are needed for a petroleum storage licence?
Principally the site plan, key plan and layout drawing, together with a tank schedule giving capacities, construction and product class, supported by ownership or lease documents, company constitution papers, fabrication and test certificates and competent person certification.
Do we need separate approval for electrical equipment?
Electrical equipment installed in hazardous areas under the Petroleum Rules requires approval from the Chief Controller of Explosives, with zone classification governing permitted protection types. It is a separate track from the storage licence.
We added a tank since our last renewal. What now?
That is an amendment question and it should be addressed rather than left to the next renewal. A licensed quantity that no longer matches the installed tankage is the most common finding in petroleum inspections.
How long does a petroleum licence take?
PESO’s published timeline states that online applications through the National Single Window System are auto-inwarded four times a day and processed within 21 days. That is a processing timeline, not a guaranteed outcome date; query cycles extend it.