IOC may pay 37% more for oil imports

Indian Oil Corporation's (IOC) crude oil import bill for 2004-05 (April-March) is likely to rise 37 per cent to $8.5 billion owing to the spurt in global oil prices, a senior company official said

Tuesday. IOC is likely to import around 33 million tonne of crude oil in 2004-05, almost the same as last year, he said.

"The oil import bill is likely to be in the range of $8-8.5 billion for this year against $6.2 billion last year," the official said.

"Oil prices continue to remain high even though they have come down from their peak last month," he said.

The average cost per barrel of the Indian basket of crude oil, which was at $32.37 in April, had shot up to $43.63 in October but was down to around $40 a barrel in November, the official said.

Last month, global crude oil prices had shot past $55 a barrel. Since then, prices have eased to below $50 a barrel.

For the first half of the current financial year, IOC's import bill was at $4.4 billion, up 21.5 per cent from $3.62 billion a year ago.

The company imported around 16 million tonne of crude oil during April-September against 14.9 million tonne in the same period last year. The IOC official said the fire at its Koyali refinery in Gujarat would have only a "very marginal" impact on the company's annual crude oil imports.

"Our imports for the year will be lower by only 500,000 tonne""which is not much when compared with the expected import of around 33 million tonne," he said.

On October 29, a fire had broken out in the refinery's fluidised catalytic cracker unit, injuring 16 people. Koyali is IOC's biggest refinery with an annual capacity of 13 million metric tonnes.

IOC is India's largest integrated oil company. IOC and its units have a combined annual refining capacity of 48.15 million tonne.