India's crude oil production rises 4.2 percent in April-Nov

Thursday, 19 December 2002, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India's crude oil production rose 4.2 percent in April-November to 22.117 million metric tonnes (MMT) as against 21.235 MMT in the corresponding period last year, according to the petroleum ministry. The cumulative production is 0.7 percent higher than the target of 21.971 MMT for April-November, while for November alone the increase was 1.4 percent over the target of 2.705 MMT, an official release stated Wednesday. Dependent on imports for 70 percent of its requirement, India has embarked on a multi-pronged strategy to boost indigenous production through fresh exploration efforts and redevelopment of existing proven oil fields. Recovery from the southern region business centre of the state-owned exploration major Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) oil fields in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu was the highest at around 137-147 percent. The lowest output was from the state-owned Oil India Ltd's oil fields in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast, which had only around 85 percent recovery. This was due to increase in water/oil ratio in a few new fields. In terms of gas, the production at 2,611 million cubic metres (MCM) during November was five percent higher than 2,486 MCM in the corresponding month last year. Between April-November, the gas production at 20,593 MCM was 4.4 percent higher than the production of 19,726 MCM during the corresponding period last year. With domestic demand rising, reflecting growth in the industrial and transport sector, the refinery production in the country at 74.219 MMT between April-November also showed five percent growth over the corresponding period last year when it was 70.662 MMT. Overall the production utilisation of the around 116 MMT refinery capacity was 4.1 percent lower than the target of 77.370 MMT for April-November. The under utilisation of capacity varied from shortfall in crude availability to less demand to 30 days annual planned turnaround at Reliance refinery at Jamnagar. The sales of petroleum products witnessed a 2.1 percent rise to 54.4 million tonnes in April-November compared with the same period in 2001. While diesel sales showed only a marginal rise of 0.2 percent to 24.4 million tonnes, petrol sales benefited by a growth in automobile sales to record nine percent rise over the corresponding period last year to 5.07 million tonnes.
Source: IANS
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