HPCL is in focus on back of their first-quarter numbers. The management in an interview with CNBC-TV18 after reporting their quarterly performance has said that their volumes are back to pre-pandemic levels. “If you compare to the 2019, if you see the July petrol, we are already above the pre-pandemic level,” said MK Surana, CMD, HPCL.

It is noteworthy that Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) have kept the prices of petrol and diesel unchanged for over two weeks now and the last increase pushed the price of petrol in Delhi closer to the Rs 102 per-litre mark. Petrol prices have not changed for 19 days in a row now. Surana threw some light on the issue at hand. “There has been too many up down in the last few days and the average of 15 days rolling prices -- the crude price is one part of it but the product cracks also has gotten impacted by the exchange rate also, so that domestic prices gets guided by the international product prices and not only from crude prices,” he said.

For the quarter gone by, HPCL’s reported gross refining margins (GRM)s came off a bit at USD 3.30 per barrel but the marketing side did well. Revenue came in at Rs 72,443 crore, EBITDA was Rs 3,193 crore versus a CNBC-TV18 poll of Rs 3,008 crore. Operating profit margins for the quarter stood at 4.4 percent and PAT stood at Rs 1995 crore. Preliminary sales data has shown that India's fuel demand picked up in July as the easing of pandemic-related restrictions accelerated economic activity, helping petrol consumption reach pre-Covid levels.

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Discussing the volume picture Surana said, “As far as the volumes are concerned, as far as MS, HSD, LPG, the main product lines are concerned we did quite well rather better than the industry. As far as industrial products are concerned that was slightly lower because we had taken a shutdown of our Mumbai refinery. And some of the industrial products like lubes and bitumen are supplied from there and is directly related to the supplier from the refinery.” said Surana.

Taking about LPG, the CMD said that the OMC has had one of the highest Q1 volume so far. “So volume-wise the pickup was quite good compared to last quarter, in this it was almost 36 percent, ATF was almost 118 percent and LPG has always been good, it was 2.6 percent up,” said Surana.

For the entire interview, watch the accompanying video.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:Aug 5, 2021 1:00 PM IST