State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) Saturday reported a 61 per cent jump in its September quarter net profit as higher prices offset a dip in oil production.

Its net profit was ₹8,265 crore in July-September as compared to ₹5,131 crore in the same period last year, the company said in a statement.

The company got $73.07 for every barrel of crude oil it produced and sold in the second quarter, up 48 per cent from $49.43 per barrel realisation a year ago.

Because of the depreciation in rupee, ONGC’s realisation soared 61 per cent to ₹5,117 per barrel. ONGC bills its customers in US dollars.

It got $3.05 per million British thermal unit for natural gas as against $2.48 per mmBtu last year.

The PSU oil major’s turnover was up 47.6 per cent to ₹27,989 crore.

Oil production fell 7 per cent to 4.9 million tonnes but gas output was up 3 per cent at 6.1 billion cubic metres.

ONGC reasoned the decline to contractor not delivering a production unit for western offshore WO-16 Cluster.

Non-delivery of the facility, which was scheduled to come at the beginning of the fiscal year, “led to a loss of oil production of about 0.35 million tonnes”, ONGC said.

“ONGC took stringent action to terminate the contract and pro-actively awarded a new contract recently for commissioning of (the facility) by March 2019,” the statement said.

In WO-16 Cluster, all the 15 wells have been completed, which will be put on production once the Mobile Offshore Production Unit (MOPU) for oil production is commissioned, it said.

“ONGC gas production has seen an increasing trend on year on year basis. The gas production has increased by about 3 per cent in first half of 2018-19” to 12 billion cubic meters, the statement said.

“The gas production is expected to increase further with the completion of Daman Development Project in Western Offshore and further increase from VA-S1 field in Eastern Offshore,” it said.

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