Financial position of the company has become considerably better: Gautam Roy, MD, CPCL

CPCL is in best shape since its existence, Gautam Roy, MD, CPCL, said to ET Now in an interview. He also revealed various details about his company during the interview.

Edited Excerpts:

What were the key highlights of the Q4 and what would you attribute as pressure points?


In Q4 our GRM was $7.02 against $5.02 in the same quarter last year. So there is an increase in GRM though if you see the profit before tax (PBT), it is Rs 178 crore against Rs 264 crore of last year. This drop in PBT was mainly one time provision we have made for likely revised salary which is likely to be effective from 1st January 2017. Besides, gratuity is likely to increase from Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 20 lakhs.

What was the throughput for this quarter and what are the GRM trends which you are witnessing?

GRM for this financial year was $6.05 against $5.27 a barrel last year, so year to year basis it is more and profit before tax of current year is in fact second highest. There is a jump of around 80% in PBT and PAT also has increased from Rs 740 crore to Rs 1024 crore.

Q4 throughput was 2085 tonne against 2832 in corresponding Q4 of last year mainly because we have taken plant shutdown in Q4 of this year which was not there last year. But year on year basis 2016-17 throughput was 10256 thousand tonne against last year’s 9644 tonne so there is a quantum jump and in fact after seven years we could achieve MoU throughput.

Our last year distillates were highest ever in the history of CPCL and it was 72.6%. Similarly energy intensity index which is a measure of how much energy we are consuming for processing crude this was lowest ever in history of CPCL in last year, so physical performance has excelled last year compared to earlier year. Financial performance also has excelled last year.

What utilisation levels were achieved and any capacity expansion plans that you may have outlined?

We have got two refineries - one in Manali with a capacity of around 10.5 million tonne and one in Narimanam with 1 million tonne capacity. The Narimanam facility is a small refinery and its capacity utilisation depends on crude availability.

The Manali facility is our main refinery where we are close to 100% capacity utilisation. We have ongoing projects of around Rs 5200 crore including the Resid Upgradation Project which will improve our distillates. Other than this we are changing our crude pipeline which is very old. This crude pipeline is around 48 years old and it is passing through congested line so we are replacing it with a new state of the art technology and with lot of safety features with by incurring a cost of around Rs 258 crore.