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| Edited By: Debjit Chakraborty |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 16, 2018, 06:37 AM IST
State-owned oil marketing companies, which were losing less than a rupee on the sale of petrol and diesel till about a month back, are now facing a revenue loss of close to Rs 4 a litre due to sudden spurt in global crude oil prices.
In the fortnight beginning Monday, the three retailers — IndianOil (IOC), Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum — are incurring a revenue loss of Rs 3.85 per litre on petrol and Rs 3.71 a litre on diesel, a senior IndianOil official said.
The companies calculate gross revenue loss on automobile fuels every fortnight, based on prices in the preceding fortnight. During the month-ago period, the three firms were losing 83 paise per litre on retail sale of petrol and 7 paise per litre on diesel.
Revenue losses in the fortnight ended November 15 were Rs 3.38 and Rs 2.95 per litre of petrol and diesel, respectively. The gross revenue loss on kerosene during the current fortnight stood at Rs 16.34 per litre and on cooking gas at Rs 201.88 per 14.2 kg cylinder, the official said.
India’s crude oil basket has risen to $77.27 per barrel during the first fortnight of November. “IOC’s everyday revenue loss is estimated at Rs 8 crore on petrol sale, Rs 31 crore on diesel sale, Rs 33 crore on kerosene, and Rs 20 crore on retail sale of cooking gas,” the official with the country’s largest oil product retailer said.
The official said IOC’s gross revenue loss for the financial year ending March is currently pegged at Rs 25,440 crore, compared with Rs 19,790 crore in the second fortnight of last month.
Gross revenue loss for the three state-owned refining-cum-oil marketing companies is likely at Rs 45,160 crore for the full year, the official said. State-owned oil retailers incur revenue losses as they sell fuels below production cost, as retail prices of oil products are regulated by the government.
The gross revenue loss for PSU retailers is shared partly by the upstream oil companies like ONGC, Oil India Ltd and GAIL (India) Ltd, and partly by the government through issuance of oil bonds. The government had said in the current financial year it would only issue bonds for the losses on kerosene and cooking gas, while losses on petrol and diesel would be borne mostly by the upstream companies. However, the government has so far not notified any bonds for 2009-10.
