On Tuesday, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met Russian oil giant Rosneft's chief executive officer Igor Sechin and discussed raising crude imports from that country, in addition to talks about going for more acquisitions.
Majority of PLL's long-term deals are linked to crude, which faces price challenge from other fuels. Spot LNG is moving away from this linkage, which puts a question mark on crude linked contracts.
The prime minister's visit to Washington should focus more on shopping for energy security and stopping the US from snooping on us, reigning in its popular and innocuously operated instruments to gather intelligence like Google, says Tarun Vijay.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said inflation management cannot be "singularly" left to the monetary policy as a majority of activities are outside its purview in the current context. Speaking at a seminar organised by economic think-tank Icrier, the finance minister said that both the fiscal policy and the monetary policy have to work together to contain inflation. Consumer price index (CPI) based inflation or retail inflation is ruling above the Reserve Bank's comfort level of 6 per cent since January.
The Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday reviewed the coal supply and power generation scenario as the government looks at ways to defuse the energy crisis being faced by several states.
Cooking gas LPG price on Wednesday was hiked by Rs 15 per cylinder in line with a surge in international fuel prices. Rates of both subsidised and non-subsidised LPG prices were hiked, oil company officials said. Cooking gas now costs Rs 899.50 per cylinder in Delhi.
After missing two self-imposed deadlines, billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday announced recalibration of a proposed $15 billion deal to sell 20 per cent stake in its oil refinery and petrochemical business to Saudi Aramco, saying the two firms have agreed to re-evaluate the proposed investment in light of the Indian firm's new energy forays. The stake sale talks, which were first officially revealed in August 2019, are being reset in light of Reliance making forays into new energy business in recent months by investing $10 billion in alternative energy over three years. To pivot to green energy, it has already bought a German maker of photovoltaic solar wafers and signed a deal with a Danish company to manufacture hydrogen electrolysers in India.
The rupee depreciation will work in favour of students who are currently studying in the US and plan to secure a job that pays in dollars.
Thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets since April 9, as the government ran out of money for vital imports; prices of essential commodities have skyrocketed and there are acute shortages in fuel, medicines and electricity supply.
The government on Monday said the coal supply at the thermal power stations is not adequate and the countrywide fuel stock has come down to half of the requirement norm of 22 million tonnes.
The 62 per cent increase in natural gas prices by the Indian government will boost the profitability of upstream companies in the country and support their investment spending, Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday. The price for gas from fields that were assigned by the state to oil companies, mainly Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL), increased to $2.90 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for October 2021-March 2022, from $1.79 per mmBtu in the previous six months. "Higher gas prices will increase the input cost for key end-consumer sectors, to the extent the price hike is passed on," Fitch said.
The Competition Commission of India has slapped Coal India Ltd with a penalty of Rs 1,773 crore (Rs 17.73 billion) -- the biggest by the watchdog on a company -- over alleged abuse of its monopolistic position.
If international crude oil prices zoom past the current level of about $90 per barrel and move towards $100 and beyond, middle-class consumers are not going to keep quiet about their discomfort, points out Arun Balakrishnan, former chairman and managing director, Hindustan Petroleum.
India, which consumed over 138 million tonnes of fuel in 2009-10, imports three-fourth of its oil needs and one-third of its gas requirement.
Delhi, reeling under high temperatures and an acute electricity shortage, will get additional gas supplies from the National Thermal Power Corporation and Dabhol to increase power generation and help meet demand in the national capital.
The trend is expected to gain momentum as global vehicle makers in India, particularly from Japan, ride on hybrids to meet the more stringent fuel efficiency norms that take effect in 2022.
India believes in sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayaas and walks ahead with it, Modi said.
From Jammu and Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh, consumers are facing power cuts ranging from 2 hours to 8 hours.
Sri Lanka's Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday imposed emergency giving him sweeping powers ahead of the key election on July 20 to pick a new President as he urged the political parties to put aside differences and form an all-party government, with the Opposition dubbing his decision as an 'undemocratic draconian act'.
Armed with a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers' Group India is now scouting for uranium from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Niger to fuel its atomic power plants which are running at half their installed capacity.
'India has given assistance that we required, otherwise we would not have been able to survive this far.'
State-owned oil firms such as ONGC and IOC will invest over Rs 1.11 lakh crore in the next fiscal year starting April as they supplement the government's massive spending programme to spur economic growth. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), GAIL (India) Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will together make a 7.4 per cent higher capital expenditure in the 2022-23 fiscal (FY23). The capex spending of Rs 1.11 lakh crore in 2022-23 compares with a revised estimate of Rs 1.04 lakh crore for the current fiscal year that ends in March, according to Union budget documents.
Essar group on Friday announced the signing of a USD 2.4 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) deal to sell certain ports and power infrastructure to ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel in one of the largest post-pandemic merger and acquisition deals in India. In a statement, the Ruia-run firm said the deal also envisages a 50-50 joint venture between Essar and ArcelorMittal for building a 4 million tonnes a year LNG import terminal at Hazira in Gujarat. Without giving details, it only identified certain ports and power infrastructure that are primarily captive to operations of the Hazira steel plant, which was acquired by ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel (AM/NS) in 2018-19, as part of the deal.
The Centre is staring at a combined shortfall of up to Rs 1 trillion in excise and Customs revenues in the current financial year (FY23) compared to the Budget estimates (BE), mainly because of duty cuts on edible oil and petroleum products. The government set a target of Rs 3.35 trillion for excise and Rs 2.13 trillion for Customs mop-up for FY23 while presenting the Budget in February. "As excise duty collection is mainly driven by diesel volumes, we might see a clear gap in the level budgeted for FY23, following the reduction in cesses on petrol and diesel in May. We are expecting somewhere between Rs 80,000 crore and Rs 1 trillion dip in excise and customs duty collections," a senior government official told Business Standard.
British energy giant BP Plc plans to tap rural India with cheap and clean fuel sources besides expanding its solar power business and cooperating in exploration, refining and marketing of fuels.
Link between oil exploration and markets can be used by India to great advantage.
The coming years will be among the most exciting of your professional lives, IndiGo's new chief executive officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers wrote to the airline's staff after taking charge on Tuesday. Elbers, who spent three decades at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, replaces Ronojoy Dutta at the top post. "Earlier, IndiGo communication summarised it all in just three words: 'Towards new heights' and-let me add here: 'across new frontiers'. "With that vision in mind, you should feel assured that the coming years will be among the most exciting of your professional lives," Elbers said.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday fired Basil Rajapaksa from his post and invited the Opposition parties to join a unity Cabinet to tackle the raging public anger against the hardships caused by the economic crisis.
Housing prices increased by up to 11 per cent annually across eight major cities during January-March period of this year due to a rise in demand for residential properties and a sharp hike in rates of construction raw materials, according to a joint report by CREDAI, Colliers and Liases Foras. Delhi-NCR witnessed highest rise in housing prices by 11 per cent to Rs 7,363 per sq ft during January-March 2022 as compared to the year-ago period, as per the first edition of Housing Price-Tracker report by realtors body CREDAI, real estate consultant Colliers and data analytics firm Liases Foras. Hyderabad witnessed 9 per cent increase in housing prices to Rs 9,232 per square feet, while Ahmedabad saw a 8 per cent appreciation to Rs 5,721 per square feet and Kolkata 6 per cent to Rs 6,245 per square feet.
Upbeat high-frequency indicators and consumer confidence show that Indian economy continues to forge ahead, emerging out of shackles of pandemic, said an article on the state of economy published in RBI Bulletin on Wednesday. The recovery is spearheaded by an uptick in private investment through November-December alongside a turnaround in bank credit offtake and high capex from the government sector (Centre and states). In conjunction, the employment situation has brightened, said the article written by RBI officials.
Govt unlikely to cut excise duties to compensate for higher global prices, say analysts.
Thousands of Inter University Students' Federation (IUSF) students were seen sloganeering outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Wijerama Mawatha.
'There will be a series of rate hikes, but the pace and quantum will depend on how the economy in the US and the rest of the world behave.'
The rise was due to a sharp fall in prices, which spurred demand.
The funds revealed by Australian players will go towards programmes by UNICEF that support nutrition, healthcare, safe drinking water, education, and mental health services for 1.7 million vulnerable in-need children in the country.
Loans of over Rs 1.8 trillion, for which agreement has been signed by banks, are likely to be referred to IBC.
India's likely medium-term potential growth will almost certainly be markedly lower than that experienced in pre-pandemic years, warns Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor to the Government of India.
Arunabha Ghosh on why India will increasingly become an energy great power, but not an energy hegemon.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the recent interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank was not surprising for her but the timing was, asserting that the rising cost of funds will not impact the government's planned infrastructure investments. For the first time since August 2018, RBI had on May 4 delivered a blunt 40 basis points increase in key repo rate to 4.40 per cent, and also hiked the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points to 4.5 per cent after an unscheduled meeting of the rate setting panel, citing increased inflation pressures following the Ukraine war and the resultant spike in crude oil prices. Retail inflation printed at 6.9 per cent in March and the April reading is forecast to top 7.7 per cent.
Between fiscals 2009 and 2014, India's energy import bill surged at an average 14 per cent annually to $161 billion.
