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.
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.
Getting compensated for at least 90 per cent of losses without government subsidy appears difficult.
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.
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.
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.
Petrol prices were freed from government control last month, resulting in a Rs 3.50 per litre rate hike in Delhi.
OMCs losing Rs 20 crore daily on sales, 18 months after prices were deregulated.
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.
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."
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.
The gvernment said on Tuesday that contingency plans have been drawn to maintain continuous supply of petroleum products if the employees of privatisation bound Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd go on strike.\n\n\n\n
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.
With the new Bharat Stage IV emission norms coming into effect from Thursday, oil companies are gearing up to meet the requirements of Mumbai, an official said on Friday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The bonds will help oil marketing companies - IOC, HPCl, Bharat Petroleum and IBP Ltd - to cover their under-recoveries.
It is in talks with a local player for a discovered asset so that it can have a ready cash flow in one or two years.
IOC and other state retailers had on September 16 raised jet fuel price by 2.5 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.
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 7-member committee, headed by former Hindustan Petroleum chairman M B Lal attributed the fire to lack of safety procedures and human error.
India must be prepared for a big, fat fuel import bill in FY23 - barring any further avatars of the Covid virus - as refiners crank up runs, or crude processing rates, to meet the growing demand for fuels, and crude prices soar. Capacity additions by an Indian state-run refiner will reinforce the need for foreign crude. Demand for all fuels is expected to increase by 3-8 per cent next fiscal from 2021-22, reaching pre-pandemic levels, according to analysts and industry experts.
Petrol and diesel prices were cut by Rs 2 per litre each as state-owned oil companies ended a nearly two-year-long hiatus in rate revision, just hours before the general election schedule was announced.
With the new owner shelling out Rs 18,000 crore for the buyout of 'Maharaja' this would be the highest ever amount garnered through privatisation or even the cumulative sum garnered through strategic sale in 1999-00 to 2003-04. The government had garnered roughly over Rs 5,000 crore during that five-year period by privatising 10 CPSEs.
A Parliamentary Committee asked the government on Thursday to seek approval of Parliament before privatising oil refiners Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd as the two were nationalised
The basket of crude oil India buys from overseas markets averaged $68.07 per barrel in September as against the August average of $71.98 a barrel.
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.
The government's decision to raise fuel prices in June has scuttled the oil companies' plans to reduce their losses from retail fuel sales as consumers are buying less of premium fuels, which is more expensive than normal fuels.
