Mumbai: India’s biggest oil refiner Indian Oil Corp. is planning to invest as much as $3.5 billion in the year beginning 1 April, or about a fifth more than the previous year, to expand and upgrade its refineries and boost its marketing network, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The company plans to use internal resources for the capital expenditure and has no plans to raise loans or issue bonds, the people said, asking not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak to the media.

The country’s top oil marketing company, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), is slated to face more delay in getting land from the Odisha government for putting up different units of its planned petrochemical complex at Paradip.

IOC, in February last year, had asked for 2,290 acres of additional land to commission the petrochemical units. The oil major preferred to have land contiguous to its 15-million-tonne-per-annum crude oil refinery at Paradip.

NEW DELHI: State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) may buy 26 per cent stake each in gas utility GAIL India Ltd, paying the government over Rs 20,000 crore each to become integrated energy firms.

Following Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's February 2017 Budget announcement of creating integrated oil majors, IOC and BPCL had submitted separate proposals to buy the government's 54.89 per cent stake in India's biggest gas marketing and transportation firm, GAIL.

The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has developed refining processes that may help it save at least $1.5 billion in costs as well as challenge global giants in the technology-leasing business. The state-run company, which controls nearly half of the country’s refineries, has created its own processes using catalysts and hydro-cracking to convert crude oil into fuels such as gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas, according to the company’s head of research & development. That means it won’t have to license technology anymore from the likes of major manufacturing companies such as Honeywell International.

Indian Oil, ONGC and Coal India have emerged as the most profitable PSUs for 2016-17, whereas BSNL, Air India and MTNL incurred the highest losses, according to a government survey tabled in Parliament today.

The Public Enterprises Survey 2016-17, which mapped the performance of central public sector units, showed that the top ten loss-making state-owned firms accounted for a whopping 83.82 per cent of the total losses made by 82 loss-making CPSEs during the year.

ONGC, Oil India and BPCL’s Area-1 project moved a step forward this week although FID may still be months away. Even so, with start-up only in 2023E, any earnings uplift is years away with development spend likely to weigh on cashflow in the interim with Oil India, BPCL more vulnerable to downside surprises than ONGC. Nonetheless, with valuations inexpensive we keep our ‘Buy’ on ONGC, Oil India preferring IOCL to BPCL/HPCL in downstream SOEs.

Shares of state-owned oil marketing companies (OMC) were trading weak with the Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) hitting a 52-week low of Rs 363.60 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in intra-day trade on Wednesday.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) were down 1% to 2%, as compared to 0.07% rise in the Nifty 50 index.

In a step towards effective digitization, Indian Oil Corporation Limited in association with Ratnakar Bank Limited (RBL) on Wednesday launched a co-branded pre-paid card facility for its customers at Bhopal.

The card was launched by DK Sharma, Executive Director (Retail Sales), IndianOil, Mr. Vigyan Kumar, Chief General Manager, IndianOil Madhya Pradesh State Office, Shrinath Bolloju, Chief Operating Officer, RBL Bank and Sujata Mohan, Head (Digital Banking), RBL Bank.

Amid reports that GAIL (India) may be split into marketing and gas pipeline verticals, Indian Oil (IOC)—which has shown interest in acquiring the gas utility—reckons that either divisions or the total business of GAIL offers synergies for the oil marketing company (OMC).

“Whatever plans GAIL has in future in terms of expanding infrastructure, we can do that and there is a possibility of integration to execute the plans faster.

Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday said IOC and BPCL are both keen to acquire gas utility GAIL India Ltd, which as per the extant policy needs to be split by separating gas transportation business from its marketing unit.

IOC and BPCL have separately indicated to the Petroleum Ministry their interest in taking over GAIL to add natural gas to their oil refining and marketing business.

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