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Falling prices of crude oil have contributed to Chennai Petroleum Corporation reporting an 80 per cent growth in net profit for the first quarter of the current year as compared to the previous quarter last year.
CPCL, an oil refinery and part of the Indian Oil Corporation group, reported a net profit of ₹ 923.51 crore (₹510.11 crore) on a total income of ₹ 9,053.43 crore (₹ 12,989.44 crore).
The fall in crude oil prices have contributed to the Gross Refining Margins, the money that a refiner makes from processing crude oil into fuel, increased five times to $10.09 a barrel ($1.88).
Addressing a press conference on the company’s performance, Gautam Roy, Managing Director, said apart from the crude oil prices, overall performance has also improved contributing to the growth in profits.
The capital expenditure planned during 2015-16 is about ₹ 1,392 crore and the first quarter expenditure is on track with the plans, he said.
B Ashok, Chairman, IOC, said while crude oil price movement has contributed to CPCL’s performance, the refinery is also being strengthened with long term plans. A ₹3,110-crore will be ready by the year-end with more than half the work completed as of now. This will increase the distillate yield and give it ability to handle high sulphur crude.
A modern crude 42-inch crude oil pipeline will be completed by 2016. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the Petroleum and Explosives Safety clearances were obtained in May 2015, he said. Work is also on at the refinery to enable its production to meet the fuel quality standards under BS-IV from April 2017.
IOC’s Ennore terminalCPCL will also shift to using LNG as a fuel at its refinery from the present liquid fuels. This will happen once IOC’s LNG terminal at Ennore to the North of Chennai goes on stream. Work has started on this project, he said.
Work on the ₹ 5,000-crore Ennore LNG Terminal coming up in a 130-acre plot within the Kamarajar Port to the North of Chennai has picked up.
The terminal will have a capacity to handle 5 million tonnes of imported LNG
Ashok said two of the three major contracts have been allocated. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is handling the contract to build refrigerated storage tanks to hold the imported LNG and Black and Veatch consortium is handling the contract for regasification facilities. The third major contract will be for marine facilities which will come up later.
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