Indian refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd meets up to 23% of its oil needs at discounted Russian prices, chairman Pushp Kumar Joshi said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Friday.
Indian refiners, which rarely buy Russian oil, are picking up discounted barrels after many Western countries avoided buying oil from Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine.
HPCL’s consumption of Russian oil is limited by its refinery configuration, Joshi said, but the company is maximizing use of this cheaper opportunity crude, he added, which helps hedge against the risks associated with high oil prices.
State-controlled HPCL operates a 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery at Mumbai in the western state of Maharashtra and a 300,000 barrels per day refinery at Vizag in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. They are also building an oil refinery with a capacity of 180,000 barrels per day and a petrochemical complex in the desert state of Rajasthan.
Mr Joshi said HPCL hopes to operate a secondary unit at the Vizag refinery soon to increase its distillate output.
The company plans capex of 750 billion rupees ($9.08 billion) over the next five years, including for refinery upgrades and natural gas and renewable energy projects.
About a quarter of planned spending will go towards green initiatives to help HPCL achieve its goal of zero emissions by 2040. The company plans to transfer all of its green and new businesses to new subsidiaries, said Joshi.
Apart from selling conventional fuels such as petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas in India, HPCL is also a major supplier of lubricants, which currently exports to around 20 countries. It seeks to increase production capacity in order to increase exports.
Joshi said in-principle approval had been granted to explore possible options, including separating the lubricants business for added value, subject to approval from relevant authorities.
($1 = 82.6277 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Writing by Kirsten Donovan)
