IndianOil energises quarterly profit by 25.46% to Rs. 8,269 cr
New Delhi   30-Aug-2016

State-owned Indian Oil Corp on Monday said the company’s highest first-quarter profit at Rs 8,268.98 crore was on the back of robust petrochemical margins and inventory gains, as it also declared a 1:1 bonus share. Net profit of Rs 8,268.98 crore, or Rs 34.90 a share, in April-June was 25.46 per cent higher than Rs 6,590.83 crore, or Rs 27.81 per share, in the same period a year ago, IOC Director (Refineries) Sanjiv Singh told reporters here.

“The highest first quarter profit was primarily due to rise in petrochemical margins and inventory gains,” he said. Petrochem margin rose Rs 446 crore to Rs 2,224 crore in Q1. Also there was an inventory gain of Rs 7,479 crore. The company earned $9.98 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel in April-June quarter as compared to a gross refining margin of $10.77 per barrel.

While refinery thruput rose 18.7 per cent to 16.099 million tonnes, domestic fuel sales was up 5.3 per cent to 20.415 million tonnes. Singh said all of its Rs 1,331.69 crore revenue loss on sale of PDS kerosene during the quarter was reimbursed by the government. Drop in oil price meant its revenue fell from Rs 1,14,200.24 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2015 to Rs 1,07,670.95 crore in first quarter of current fiscal. Earlier, the oil PSU have said that it will invest around Rs 650 crore in expanding its storage and bottling capacity in Tripura over the next three years as it looks to prevent fuel crisis in the state. IndianOil-AOD, the company’s North East division, will also start moving a convoy of 20 tankers by the end of this month to the North Eastern state for the first time via Bangladesh to avoid the dilapidated NH-44 in Assam.

“Apart from exploring new routes to supply fuel for ending the crisis in Tripura, we are looking to increase the storage capacity in the state. We are working on both the possibilities so that common people do not suffer there,” Indian Oil Corporation Executive Director (IndianOil-AOD) Dipankar Ray said. For this purpose, the company will set up one Petroleum, Oil and Lubricant (POL) depot and a new bottling plant in Agartala, he added. “The POL depot will incur an investment of around Rs 500 crore, while Rs 143 crore have been estimated for setting up the bottling plant over the next 2-3 years. The investment includes land cost as well and the land parcels have already been identified for both the units,” Ray said.

In Tripura, the company has a POL depot at Dharmanagar with a capacity of around 6,000 kilo litre (kl) and an LPG bottling plant at Bishalgarh with a capacity of 30,000 million tonnes per annum in double shifts.