OIL reports 152 pc growth in profit: CMD Sushil Chandra Mishra

After Baghjan oil well blowout, company makes changes in safety measures and crisis management

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The performance of Oil India Limited (OIL) in the last financial year was not satisfactory. However, OIL has seen good financial and production results in the first nine months of the current financial year (2021-22), said OIL Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Sushil Chandra Mishra. He was addressing a press conference in Guwahati today.

"The Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station will come up in Guwahati by June. The Assam Government is gearing up to launch CNG bus service and has already placed order for CNG buses," said the CMD. He mentioned OIL's ambitious project to undertake oil drilling at a depth of 6,500 metres at Sadiya in Tinsukia district. "Earlier, we had taken up drilling at a depth of 6,200 metres in Arunachal Pradesh. However, this project was not successful. Now, we have targeted to take up drilling at 6,500 metres at Sadiya. The drilling will be done in two parts. The first part of drilling will be done in May-June this year," said Mishra. If the drilling is successful, it will be a record for OIL as it has never done drilling at such a depth before, he added.

Regarding the proposal for house-to-house gas connection through pipelines in Guwahati, the CMD said that this project would take around five years to complete. When asked if using ethanol-blended petrol will damage vehicles, the CMD brushed aside this apprehension by saying that countries like Brazil have been using ethanol-blended petrol for long.

Highlighting the company's performance, CMD Mishra said, "OIL has reported 152 per cent growth in the Profit After Tax (PAT) for the period ended December 31, 2021. The company has reported profit of Rs 2,257. 30 crore in the period as against Rs 894. 03 crore in the nine months period last year. For the third quarter FY 2021-22 also the company has reported 38 per cent increase in PAT to Rs 1244.90 crore. The turnover of the company has increased to Rs 10051.57 crore from Rs 6028.72 crore last year upto December. Natural gas production in Q3 2021-22 has improved by 17.83 per cent as compared to Q3 2020-21. Natural gas production during the nine-month period in 2021-22 has also increased by 16 per cent as compared to nine months period in 2020-21. Crude oil production has broadly remained constant."

After the Baghjan oil well blowout, OIL has made many changes in safety measures and crisis management. Addressing the press conference, Pankaj Kumar Goswami, Director (Operations), said, "After the Baghjan incident, we reviewed the Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) and found many loopholes. All the 1,044 SOPs have been revised one by one."

He said that on reviewing the Baghjan incident, it was found that the company's crisis management team was not adequately equipped to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. "We are working on strengthening our crisis management team. Some new machines have been brought for crisis management while some are on the way," he said.

Goswami further said, "Earlier we could not fix responsibility if any accident took place during workover (shift change). So after review, we have now worked out a system to fix accountability and responsibility on one person."

Harish Madhav, Director (Finance), briefed media persons about the fiscal status of the company in the current financial year.

Meanwhile, OIL officials said that a hydrogen plant was being built in Jorhat. The target for completion of this project is May 2022 but the project is expected to be completed by March. Once this hydrogen plant becomes operational, OIL will become a pioneer in the field of hydrogen production.

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