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New Delhi: India's crude oil imports in January rose 7.4 per cent from a year earlier as state-run refiners met a jump in dealer demand for transport fuels ahead of an expected rise in retail prices.
Asia's third-largest oil consumer imported 2.37 million barrels of oil per day in January, up from nearly 2.21 million bpd in the same month a year ago, government data showed yesterday.
Crude imports by state-run refiners, which meet most of the domestic demand as they alone get compensated by the government for selling fuel at low rates, surged an annual 8.6 per cent.
Oil product sales, a proxy for demand, increased to 11.20 million tonnes, a rise of 4.3 per cent year on year.
Diesel sales, which account for nearly a third of domestic demand, grew by an annual 15.9 per cent in January, while petrol purchases were up 14.5 per cent in the fast-growing economy.
"Petrol and diesel sales in January were high as dealers maintained high inventories in expectation of a fuel price hike," said an oil ministry official, who could not be named.
After several weeks of delays, the government in mid-February raised retail prices of petrol and diesel by around four per cent to ease losses at state oil firms, which had been hurt by a surge in the price of global crude.
The April-January period saw sales of diesel growing 10.5 per cent from a year earlier, while petrol rose 11.9 per cent.
Overall domestic naphtha sales in January fell 6.9 per cent on year with most of the private petrochemical and fertiliser plants now operating on natural gas.
But naphtha imports on an annual basis were up 12.3 per cent in January as work to upgrade a processing plant at India's largest gas field temporarily trimmed gas supplies. Exports slumped for the same reason.
India expects domestic demand for oil products to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 2.9 percent to 132 million tonnes by 2011-12.
Though January simple refinery margins in Asia were minus $0.65 a barrel, they were more favourable than artificially low domestic prices leading to 11.4 per cent increase in oil product exports to 2.86 million tonnes year on year.
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