Essar-Oil
Despite a 72% slide in its fourth quarter net, Essar Oil has posted a turnaround in the financial year ended March 2010. The Ruias-promoted firm, the second largest private refiner in the country, has reported a net profit of Rs 29 crore in the period under review against a net loss of Rs 514 crore in 2008-09.
The result comes ahead of the planned London Stock Exchange listing of Essar Energy, Essar Oil’s parent, with the aim of mopping up $2.5 billion through an initial public offering. The oil major also said its board of directors, at its meeting held on April 13, approved the resignation of vice-chairman Ravikant N Ruia from the board with effect from March 30.
The turnaround came about despite profit slipping to Rs 180 crore in the fourth quarter of 2009-10 from the Rs 660 crore in the previous corresponding period. Net sales stood at Rs 10,650 crore during the last quarter of 2009-10 against Rs 6,985 crore of the same period in the previous fiscal. “We saw refining margins bottoming out in the last quarter. With the margins improving this quarter, we are hopeful that the refining business is gradually coming out of the doldrums,” Essar Oil CEO Naresh Nayyar said in a separate statement.
Essar Oil is tripling the capacity of its refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat to 34 million tonnes by 2010-end and scouting for acquiring a refinery overseas as part of its strategy to achieve a total refining capacity of a million barrels a day. It has been in talks with Shell for buying out one of the Anglo-Dutch company’s UK refineries.
“Our 10.5-million-tonne capacity refinery is operating at 12.5 million tonnes. We plan to raise this capacity to 16 million tonnes by June 2010 and will put an additional plant of 18 million tonnes capacity by December 2010,” Nayyar had told TOI sometime back.
Essar Oil has set a target of achieving a capacity of one million barrels per day, or 50 million tonnes. “We will have 700,000 bpd (barrels per day) at Vadinar and for 300,000 bpd we are looking at opportunities outside India,” Nayyar had said.
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