India's crude oil production continued its declining trend, falling by over 3 percent in July as state-owned ONGC produced less than the target.

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The country's crude oil production declined by 3.2 percent in July to 2.5 million tonne when compared with the previous year, and by 3.37 percent in April-July to 9.9 million tonne, according to data released by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Tuesday.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the nation's largest oil and gas producer, produced 1.6 million tonne of crude in July. This was 4.2 percent lower than last year and 3.8 percent less than the target of 1.7 million tonne. During April-July, ONGC's oil output fell 4.8 percent to 6.4 million tonne.

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Natural gas production showed a contrasting trend. Helped by KG-D6 fields of Reliance-BP, gas production rose 18.36 percent year-on-year to 2.9 billion cubic metres and by almost 20 percent in April-July to 11 bcm.

While gas production from ONGC's fields fell over 10 percent, output from eastern offshore — where the KG-D6 fields are located — jumped 12-fold to 573.13 million cubic metres.

"Increase in gas production is through contributions from D-34 field of block KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6), which commenced from December 18, 2020 (and) wells from satellite cluster (commenced with effect from April 25, 2021)," the explanatory note to the data said.

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As fuel demand rebounded, oil refineries processed more crude oil in July. At 19.4 million tonne, crude processing in July was 9.6 percent higher than the year-ago period.

The crude throughput in July was the highest in three months, as the easing of coronavirus restrictions boosted economic activity and fed demand for fuel. Public sector refineries processed 5.6 percent more crude at 11 million tonne while private refiner Reliance Industries turned 14.4 percent more crude into fuel.

Refineries produced 6.7 percent more petroleum products in July at 20.7 million tonne and 13 percent more in April-July at 80.6 million tonne. Overall, the refineries operated at 91.34 percent of their installed capacity.

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)