Petrol pumps in Mumbai, Nagpur and other parts of the state witnessed long queues on Tuesday as people came to fill up their vehicle tanks fearing shortage of fuel amid the protest by truck drivers.
Bharat PetroResources, a wholly owned subsidiary of BPCL and Videocon Industries, holds 40 per cent of the block. Brazil's Petrobras holds the remaining 60 per cent.
Profits of the country's oil marketing companies - Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation - fell by as much as 29 per cent in 2007-08 in spite of an up to 56 per cent rise in the oil bonds these companies received during the year compared with 2006-07.
This is to compensate for their under-recoveries on the sale of petroleum products during the current financial year. Indian Oil Corporation has been issued oil bonds worth Rs 5,817.27 crore, while Bharat Petroleum Corporation has been issued bonds worth Rs 2,144.32 crore. Hindustan Petroleum Corporation has got bonds worth Rs 2,038.41 crore. Prior to this, bonds worth Rs 60,967 crore had already been issued.
A higher government borrowing will 'crowd-out' the private borrowing and push interest rates higher.
In nine hikes, petrol price has gone up by Rs 5 per litre and diesel by Rs 4.87 a litre.
Vijay Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines owes state-run oil companies over Rs 950 crore (Rs 9.50 billion0 in unpaid fuel bills while financial crisis-hit NACIL has cleared almost two-thirds of its outstanding.
The ministry of petroleum and natural gas is evaluating a threshold at which the subsidy on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or cooking gas) will be reinstated. According to a senior government official in the know, a survey is currently being conducted to determine the price at which maximum consumers will keep buying domestic cylinders. One of the options also being considered is to limit any subsidy disbursal only to Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries.
Getting compensated for at least 90 per cent of losses without government subsidy appears difficult.
OMCs losing Rs 20 crore daily on sales, 18 months after prices were deregulated.
Public sector oil marketing company Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will raise prices of petrol by 27 paise a litre, - for the first time since decontrolling petrol prices.
Petrol prices were freed from government control last month, resulting in a Rs 3.50 per litre rate hike in Delhi.
State-run Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum currently sell petrol, a commodity which the government freed from its control in June last year, at a discount of about Rs 4.50 a litre to its imported cost.
IOC and its sister PSUs, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, sell diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene at rates way lower than their imported cost to help government keep general price inflation under check.
State-owned fuel retailers, which last week raised petrol price by Rs 1.80 per litre, reported a net loss of over Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) in July-September quarter and are borrowing heavily to even buy crude oil.
While Indian Oil Corporation will get the highest Rs 5,817.27 crore (Rs 58.17 billion) of special bonds, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd will receive Rs 2,144.32-crore (Rs 21.44 billion) bonds and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd will be issued bonds worth Rs 2,038.41 crore (Rs 20.38 billion). The bonds will carry an 8 per cent coupon rate and will mature in 2026, the government said in a statement.
Kaushik Basu, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, said, "All I can say is, we are very serious about fiscal consolidation, and intend holding on to our fiscal targets, even if the crude price rises on a sustained basis."
Several members of Parliament have opposed privatisation of public sector oil firms like IOC and have asked the government not to seek a review of the Supreme Court verdict halting privatisation of HPCL and BPCL, Petroleum Minister Ram Naik said.
The petroleum ministry has sought additional oil bonds worth about Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) to cover the revenue loss on fuel sale in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal.
Over 100 chemical storage tanks built at the Pirpav jetty near Chembur have been operating without approvals from the ministry of environment and forests for over 18 years. Each of these tanks has an average capacity of 200,000 kilolitres of oil.
IOC and other state retailers had on September 16 raised jet fuel price by 2.5 per cent.
The Union oil ministry is considering a proposal to adopt differential pricing for diesel, under which industrial users like power utilities, will be charged market prices and retail consumers continue to be subsidised.
A series of rises in petrol price following its decontrol on June 25 last year has increased the state governments' earnings from value added tax on petrol by around 21 per cent.
The combined debt of Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum has risen to Rs 115,000 crore (Rs 1,150 billion) as they borrowed to make up for revenue losses on fuel sales during the first half of the current fiscal.
Higher crude oil prices have almost doubled the under-recoveries of government-owned oil marketing companies -- Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum -- in the past three years.
Despite raising petrol prices by around Rs 2.95 a litre - the second-biggest increase in this calendar year so far - public and private retailers are losing Rs 50 crore a day on selling the auto fuel.
The bonds will help oil marketing companies - IOC, HPCl, Bharat Petroleum and IBP Ltd - to cover their under-recoveries.
The government on Wednesday said there was no proposal to either merge Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum with Oil and Natural Gas Corp or Oil India Ltd with Indian Oil Corporation.
India's corporate sector is likely to report a slowdown in revenue growth and earnings for the July-September 2023 period (Q2FY24), according to earnings estimates by brokerages, after the country's top listed companies posted higher than expected profits for the first quarter. The combined net profit of Nifty50 companies, based on brokerage estimates, is expected to have grown by 19.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 1.75 trillion in Q2FY24 - a sharp deceleration from 37.6 per cent Y-o-Y growth in the combined earnings of index companies in the April-June 2023 period. According to estimates, the combined earnings in the second quarter would be down 8.8 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) basis and the lowest in the past three quarters.
The revenue loss, termed as under-recovery by oil firms, will be the highest-ever.
North Zone IG Neeraj Kumar Gupta said the man, who was a beggar, is suspected to have done the act "due to mental trauma", as he could not get any money from begging in the state.
Those in favour of a 15-day cycle for price adjustment argue that oil firms already have a mechanism of calculating the desired fuel prices on 1st and 16th of every month.
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