RIL, Essar to hit the highway to fuel oil profits

With the government deregulating prices of petrol and planning to do the same in case of diesel, private fuel retailers like Reliance Industries (RIL) and Essar plan to aggressively expand their presence along India's national highways, giving public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) a run for their money .

OMCs have traditionally controlled this high-volume business segment of the retail market. Intense compe tition from private players could put pressure on OMCs' retailing margins. "After price deregulation, there would be significant investments by private players in petroleum retailing, but they are likely to focus on highways," says Ajay Arora, an energy expert with global consultancy firm Ernst & Young.

Now that both refinery and retail prices of petrol have been deregulated, RIL and Essar can sell the fuel at any price of their choice.

This will put pressure on OMCs to keep their prices competitive, making the current practice of fortnightly price revisions irrelevant.

Competitive pricing is going to be the name of the game.

Both RIL and Essar have relatively larger and technologically more advanced refineries capable of processing a higher share of tough, heavy and sour crude oil which is cheaper. They also have the flexibility to produce more petrol and diesel out of the same barrel of crude oil. As a result, their refining cost is lower than that of PSUs like IOC, BPCL and HPCL, which have relatively older and smaller refineries.

However, refining facilities of private players are concentrated in a particular area unlike public sector players who have facilities across the country . For example, both RIL and Essar have their refineries in Jamnagar. This translates into higher transportation and distribution costs. "We are well-positioned to face competition from private players. Our overhead cost may be higher, but our distribution cost would be lower," IOC chairman BM Bansal told FE. Besides, OMCs have also acted fast in improving customer services at retail outlets.

Private players will have to further reduce their refining costs to offset the impact of higher distribution costs. Setting up new refineries to achieve geographical spread is not an option due to high capital costs. Continued from Page 1 Private players have been swapping products with O M C s t o s ave t r a n s portation costs. But it is difficult to say how long this understanding would hold once competition for market share intensifies.

The global slowdown of the last two years led to some demand contraction for petrol and diesel in North America and west Europe, both of which were favourite destinations for Indian petro-product exports.

However, the Indian market still remains lucrative, given the strong demand for auto fuels in the country.

So, it makes sense f o r p r iv a t e p l ay e r s , wh i ch h ave b e e n e x porting a sizeable quantum of their production, to expand their footprint in the domestic market.

Source: Financial Express

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