On Friday, Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC), the top refiner of the country, had reported a three fold rise in the net profit of the June quarter ended, which has helped higher gross refining margins as prices of oil products surged.
The IOC had reported a net profit of worth 59.41 billion rupees in the quarter ending June 30, which has been compared with a profit of 19.11 billion rupees in the previous year when the lockdown due to COVID-19 had hammered fuel demand and squeezed the margins.
According to Refinitiv data, the analysts had expected a net profit of 42.48 billion rupees for the first quarter.
The restrictions imposed had not been as serious as the last year, even though the country was battered by the second wave of coronavirus infections during April and May, as most of the states had allowed vehicular movement.
The company had recorded a gross refining margin profit by converting a barrel of oil into refined products of $6.58 per barrel in the three months to June compared with the minus $1.98 per barrel in the year before.
In the previous year, the revenue operations for quarter rose to 1.55 trillion rupees from 889.39 billion rupees.
About a third of India’s five million barrels per day refining capacity is controlled by the IOC and Chennai Petroleum, a unit of IOC.
