India’s Managalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited MRPL decided to halt its refinery fuel exports in the next two to three years to expand the revenues of the local retail network.
MRPL, a subsidiary of state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.NS), plans to expand its retail outlets in southern India to 1,800 by 2027 instead of 71 now, said Sanjay Varma, the managing director of MRPL.
MRPL added 31 retail fuel outlets during 2022-23 FY, taking the total number of outlets to 63 as of 31 March. Its gross refining margin was at $9.88/bbl in 2022-23, up from $8.60/bbl in the previous fiscal year.
MRPL operates a 300,000 bbl/d coastal refinery in southern Karnataka state, mostly supplying the state refiners that own about 90% of India’s retail fuel stations and exporting the remainder 10%.
MRPL has been gearing up to export gasoil to Europe, but it reconsidered this decision so as to cater to the domestic market first before exporting. MRPL is India’s second-largest exporter of gasoil to Europe.
Exports of gasoil or diesel, the primary product shipped from India to Europe, were at 25.57mn bbl (213,000 bbl/d) during the first four months of the year, data from oil analytics firm Vortexa show. This compares with 16.21mn bbl in the first four months of 2022.
“Our plan is to go for zero exports as we would like to push volumes through our retail outlets,” Varma pointed out.
MRPL’s exports have actually suffered in the past six months because of the rise in local fuel demand due to the maintenance shutdowns at other refiners.
In the current fiscal year to March 31, MRPL aims to operate its refinery at about 107-108% capacity, down from 115% a year ago, with plans for a 35–40-day maintenance outage of a 60,000 bbl/d crude unit and secondary units from late August.
Accordingly, MRPL would cut crude imports from countries including Russia in August and September because of the outage as Varma noted.
MRPL achieved its highest-ever throughput of 17.14mn t (350,313 bbl/d) in the April 2022-March 2023 fiscal year, compared with 15.05mn t the previous year, the company said. The refiner has been importing Russian crude under the price cap of $60/bbl.
