MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian Oil Corporation, is set to spend about Rs 45,000 crore over three years to build petrochemicals plants and LNG terminal, lay pipelines and upgrade its refineries, said Indiatimes.
The state-run firm is also likely to benefit from a rise in crude oil prices since January without much price fluctuations.
AK Sharma, director ( finance) said, "We want to expand the petrochemicals business fast. The company entered the petrochemicals business just a few years ago but the performance so far has made the company confident of pursuing this segment "aggressively."
Inventory loss — a result of sharp fall in prices between June 2014 and January 2015, when refiners were forced to sell products at less than their cost — destroyed profits at most refiners in the quarter to December. A large inventory loss mainly contributed to IOC's losses during the three-month period. Lower crude oil price, coupled with deregulation of fuel at home, has also slashed the company's working capital requirement, reducing the need to borrow.
The future units will manufacture products that offer large-scale opportunity and are able to substitute imports, he said. The corporation sold 2.12 million tonnes of petrochemicals in domestic and overseas markets in 2013-14. The attraction for petrochemicals is mainly due to its disproportionate impact on profits compared to its revenue, Sharma said, adding that the petrochemicals business added Rs 1,000 crore to the company's profits in the first nine months of 2014-15 while the revenue was about Rs 12,000-14,000 crore. Another growth area the company is focusing on is gas. "Gas is the fuel for future. It will replace some of our liquid fuel demand," Sharma said.
As MRC informed earlier, Indian Oil Corp restarted a high density polyethylene/linear low density polyethylene (HDPE/LLDPE) swing plant. The plant restarted this week. It was shut a week earlier for maintenance turnaround. Located at Haryana in the northern Indian state of Haryana, the plant has a production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited, or IndianOil, is an Indian state-owned oil and gas corporation with its headquarters in New Delhi, India.
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