Essar Oil, the country’s second-largest private refinery, reported a 14 per cent fall in net profit to Rs 201 crore in the September quarter, from Rs 234 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. The company attributed this to the 13-day maintenance shutdown of the flagship Vadinar refinery during the quarter.

The quarter-on-quarter fall in net profit was much steeper, at 81 per cent, from Rs 1,063 crore in the June quarter of this year.

However, gross refining margins – the difference between the cost of crude oil to the price of refined petroleum products – improved to $9.33 a barrel, from $7.03 in the previous year. The throughput fell to 4.47 million tonnes from 5.04 mt in the previous year. In the June quarter, the GRM had been $11.05 a barrel.

In a press statement, Suresh Jain, CFO, Essar Oil, said, “Our EBIDTA for the quarter as well as half year is better compared to the corresponding periods. Our profit after tax for the quarter is marginally lower compared to Q2FY15 mainly on account of lower throughput due to planned shutdown, lower product cracks and negative inventory variations.”

The domestic market contributed 46 per cent to Essar Oil’s revenues during the quarter while retail sales accounted for 10 per cent of revenues in Q2FY16 against three per cent in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

According to a press statement released by the company, Essar Oil commissioned 148 new retail outlets. The company currently has about 1,700 operational retail outlets nationwide with another 1,900 in various stages of implementation.

At the company’s coal bed methane asset in Raniganj, West Bengal, production reached 0.64 million scm/d (standard cubic meters a day). Already, 272 wells have been drilled and the company is on track to ramp up production to 1.2 million scmd over the next few months and to 2.5-3 million scmd eventually, it said.

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