Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd is hopeful of merging with or acquiring Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd before the end of the financial year 2018-2019.

HPCL has recently become a subsidiary of fellow public sector undertaking Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. MRPL was already a downstream subsidiary of ONGC.

HPCL has already expressed its interest of merging with MRPL to boost its refining capacity and add more products to its output. In response to a query on whether HPCL will be able to complete the deal in the current financial year, HPCL Chairman and Managing Director, M K Surana said, “We hope.”

“The integration makes sense. In principal we feel that it is the right direction and we need to look at the methodology of implementing it,” he said.

PTI reports:

The company has reported 4 per cent drop in its March quarter net profit on lower refining margins and inventory gains.

Net profit in the January-March quarter of the fiscal year 2017-18 stood at Rs 1,748 crore compared with a net profit of Rs 1,819 crore in the year-ago period, HPCL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh K Surana told reporters here.

“The profit decline was because of lower inventory gains compared to the previous quarter,” he said.

HPCL, which operates oil refineries at Mumbai and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, earned $7.07 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel in the fourth quarter compared to a gross refining margin of $7.99 per barrel a year ago.

Also, the company had lower inventory gain of Rs 157 crore in the three months ended March 31, 2018, against Rs 460 crore last year.

Inventory gains happen when a company buys crude oil at a particular price but by the time it is able to ship it to India and refining it into fuel, the rates have gone up. Since fuel prices are decided on the basis of prevailing international rate, the resultant gain is classified as inventory gain. There occurs an inventory loss when the reverse happens.

For the full fiscal 2017-18, the company posted its highest-ever net profit of Rs 6,357 crore on a turnover of Rs 2.43 lakh crore. In 2016-17, the company had reported a net profit of Rs 6,209 crore on a turnover of Rs 2.13 lakh crore.

“Despite lower inventory gains in the financial year 2017-18, the growth in profit is mainly due to increased refining throughput, higher domestic market sales, better-operating efficiencies and improved cracks,” Surana said.

Also, during the financial year 2017-18, HPCL achieved the highes- ever sales volume of 36.87 million tonnes, including exports of 0.68 mt, with a growth of 4.7 per cent.

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