Refiners may reduce oil imports as crude prices up, rupee declines Energy savings exceed 30% of target under PAT scheme: Power Min

NEW DELHI: India, the world's third-biggest oil importer, is considering cutting oil purchases to soften the blow from high crude oil prices and declining rupee, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Chairman Sanjiv Singh said Monday.

State refiners are looking at optimising crude oil inventory

levels without in any way affecting fuel supplies in the domestic market, he said.

Refiners maintain 7-8 days of inventory in tankages besides carrying stocks in pipelines as well as ships in transit. They are

looking at reducing these so that monthly imports of crude oil can be reduced, he said.

India is the third largest importer of crude oil and rising international crude oil prices are inflating domestic transport fuel rates in a strong demand environment. Brent, the benchmark for half of world's oil, climbed to $80 per barrel from $71 in the

last five weeks, and the Indian rupee lost ground against the dollar by 5-6 per cent during the same period, resulting in expensive crude imports.

India is 81 per cent dependent on imports to meet its oil needs.

"We had a meeting last to

last Saturday (September 15) to deliberate on a host of issues facing the industry and in that meeting, one of the options that was considered was to reduce imports by cutting down on inventory levels," Singh said.

An important factor guiding the decision was also Asian Premium climbing to as high as $3-5 per barrel in last 3-4 months, he said.

Asian Premium is extra charge being collected by oilcartel OPEC countries from Asian countries when selling oil in comparison to western countries.

"Reducing inventory levels and imports are being considered as temporary measures without impacting fuel supply in the domestic market," he said. "This decision would in no way be allowed to impact supplies of petroleum products in the domestic market. Our commitment to meet domestic supplies remains supreme."

Singh said the high oil prices will in long term impact demand and so reducing imports makes sense.

India imported 18.6 million tonne (MT) of crude oil in August for $9.8 billion. It had imported 18.1 MT of crude in the same period of 2017 for $6.4 billion.

During April-august, it has spent $48.9 billion on import of 94.9 MT of crude compared to $31 billion on the import of 89.1 MT in the same period last year.

Singh, however, did not

However, while both Indigo and Jet Airways lost market share by a few notches, Air India gained it marginally.

While Indigo flew the maximum number of passengers at 47.57 lakh in July this year, Jet Airways followed at 15.61 lakh and the national carrier Air India took the third place with 14.41 lakh passengers.

Spicejet, which clocked the highest load factor at 93.6 per cent, carried 14.04 lakh passengers and rival Goair flew 10.14 say when the move will kick in saying these are ongoing discussions.

"One thing is very clear that we do not want petroleum product supplies in the domestic market to be impacted in any way," he said.

Petrol Monday crossed the Rs 90-mark in Mumbai as rates across the country touched a new high. While petrol in Delhi costs Rs 82.72 per litre, it costs Rs 90.08 in Mumbai. Diesel is priced at Rs 74.02 in Delhi and Rs 78.58 in Mumbai.

Since mid-august, the petrol price has risen by Rs 5.58 a litre and diesel by Rs 5.3 - the most in any month since the daily price revision was introduced in mid-june last year. lakh passengers during August, as per the DGCA.

While Goair recorded average 84.6 per cent load factors across its flights, the same for Indigo and Air India stood at 82.8 per cent and 82.3 per cent, respectively, in August.

The Zexus Air Servicespromoted Zoom Air, which had started its operations with much hype in early 2017, failed to operate its service for the second month in a row with 100 per cent cancellations of flights. NEW DELHI: Energy savings are 30 per cent more at 8.67 million tonnes of oil equivalent than the target in the first phase of the energy conservation scheme Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT), Power Minister R K Singh said Monday.

Under PAT Cycle I, more than 400 large industries from key energy intensive sectors in India took measures to improve energy efficiency during the last three years which resulted in energy savings worth Rs 9,500 crore annually, the minister said.

The PAT scheme is mandatory for all designated consumers notified by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and it is one of the major initiatives under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE).

"The achievement of the first cycle of PAT has been very impressive indeed. The targets have been exceeded by more than 30 per cent. The first cycle itself led to saving of almost 1.25 per cent of our primary energy consumption," Singh said while releasing a report on the PAT Cycle I by the implementing body BEE.

"Just in first cycle of PAT we get 8.67 million tonnes of oil equivalent savings (MTOE). The II, III and IV (PAT) cycle will of course get at least 19 million tonnes of oil equivalent savings. We will be achieving our emission intensity target," Singh said.

The PAT scheme is a market-based mechanism to reduce specific energy consumption in energy intensive sector. If industries fail to achieve its target in energy savings, they will have to compensate by Energy Saving Certificates (Escerts).

The best performing industries have been able to trade about Rs 100 crore in the form of Escerts with the defaulting consumers.

The scheme has been extended to over 800 designated consumer covering 13 sectors with the inclusion of refinery, DISCOMS, Railways, Petrochemical and Commercial Buildings (Hotels). The projected target under this scheme is over 15 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2019-20.

Under PAT Cycle I, more than 400 large industries from key energy intensive sectors in India have made exemplary efforts towards improving energy efficiency during last three years.

The systematic efforts by adopting energy conservation measures by these industries coupled with technology upgradation have resulted in energy savings worth Rs 9,500 crore annually.

The main industry sector whose energy savings was evaluated pertains to Thermal Power Plant, Fertilizer, Chlor Alkali, Aluminium, Iron & Steel, Pulp & Paper, Textile and Cement sectors, which consumes more than 50 per cent of the country's total primary energy.

The various industries have adopted state of art technologies such as waste heat recovery, Top Recovery Turbine, Coke Dry Quenching, andcompressor optimization in pursuit of improving their specific energy consumption in respective sectors.

The minister also released outcome report for the study conducted by the BEE which demonstrated energy savings of 8.67 MTOE against target of 6.686 MTOE which is 30 per cent excess over the targeted energy saving.

The key sectors who performed exceedingly well are Pulp & Paper, Iron & Steel, Aluminium, Cement etc. The assessment and verification process was conducted by the BEE through an online framework with the assistance of Accredited Energy Auditors.

The outcome of scheme also resulted in energy saving of more than Rs 9500 crores, investment by industry of about Rs 26,000 crore and capacity building of more than 5,000 engineers and operators.