As the Centre considers a hike in prices of petrol and diesel, a top Indian Oil official said on Monday public sector oil firms were losing a whopping Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) per day on the sale of petroleum products.
Indian Oil Corporation alone lost Rs 80 crore (Rs 800 million) per day, the company's Chairman Sarthak Behuria said.
Declining to mention the quantum of hike suggested by the oil companies to compensate the loss, he said it was for the Centre to decide.
The oil companies were losing Rs 2.81 on the sale of each litre of petrol, Rs 4.68 on diesel, Rs 16 on kerosene and Rs 120 on every cylinder of LPG, he told reporters in Chennai.
Behuria, also the chairman of Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited, said CPCL and IOC were mooting setting up a Rs 45,000 crore (Rs 450 billion) 'grassroot refinery-cum-petrochemical' complex at suburban Ennore.
The Tamil Nadu government had appointed a committee, headed by the Chairman of the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, to id
entify land for the project, he said, adding that the new project needed 3,000
acres of land.
Engineers India Ltd, who had been contracted to prepare the pre-feasibility study on the project, would hand over its report by the end of this month. It would be an export oriented refinery, he said.
Behuria, who presided over the Annual General Meeting of CPCL, said the company earned a record profit of Rs 565 crore (Rs 5.65 billion) in the last fiscal, compared to Rs 481 crore (Rs 4.81 billion) the previous year. It also handled 10.40 million tons of crude during the period as against 10.36 MT in the previous year.
The company declared a 120 per cent dividend for 2006-07, he said.
Govt to decide on petrol price hike: IOC chief