Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the country's largest oil firm, today reported the first ever net loss in its history and said the government freeze on fuel prices may impact its expansion plans including setting up of a new refinery at Paradip in Orissa.IOC posted a net loss of Rs 540.23 mn in April-June 2005 as opposed to a net profit of Rs 14.72 bn in the same period last year, mainly due to Rs 31.94 bn lost on selling petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene below cost, company chairman S Behuria said.After last month's Rs 2.50 per litre increase in petrol and Rs 2 a litre hike in diesel prices, the company earned a revenue of Rs 18 bn in July.IOC's subsidiary IBP Co ltd posted a net loss of Rs 2.33 bn this fiscal as against Rs 86.5 mn loss in April-June quarter last year."Input cost (crude oil price) has further gone up and there is no respite on retail pricing front. Obviously it will have an impact on our projects. We cannot sustain operations if we are not able to generate investable surpluses," he said.The Rs 3,194.52 crore under-realisation on petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene was after Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and GAIL chipping in Rs 1,674.67 crore subsidy, without which IOC losses would have been close to Rs 1,000 crore."We have Rs 75 bn of ongoing projects and have planned investments of Rs 35,000 crore over the next five years as part of our corporate plan to become a 60-billion dollar company. With these kind of losses, obviously it is not possible to fund them and we will be forced to re-consider some of them," Behuria said.
