In a sense, indian oil Corporation (IOC) has perhaps always been the ‘Energy of India’ even way back in the 1960s, when it was an Indian public sector enterprise battling for market share with MNCs in the home market. Among its array of brands, Indane LPG gas and Servo range of lubricants, are now five decades old.
Over the years, Indian Oil has spread its wings, set up and acquired 11 refineries, built one of the largest pipeline networks in the world and acquired oil and gas assets overseas. The mega corporation was at rank 168 earlier this year among the world’s largest companies by sales turnover in the Fortune Global 500 list. The petroleum giant’s 2016-17 sales turnover of Rs 4,38,710 crore is not illogical considering the 50 per cent share it commands in the world’s third largest market for petroleum products — India. Its market share in aviation fuel is 63.6 per cent.
Indian Oil’s turnover does not just comprise sales of 83.5 million tonnes of petroleum products in the home market, but also earnings from exports and equity oil from its upstream assets. “Today the corporation’s E&P (exploration and production) portfolio comprises 18 active blocks, 10 domestic (including two coal bed methane blocks) and eight overseas blocks with participating interest ranging from 3.5 per cent to 100 per cent,” says IOC CMD Sanjiv Singh.
“The overseas portfolio,” he tells BW Businessworld, “includes eight blocks spanning the US, Canada, Venezuela, Libya, Gabon, Nigeria and Russia.” The foray upstream, diversification into both exploration, transportation and sale of gas (including city gas) and the more recent ventures into petrochemicals and renewable energy, completes the epithet, ‘Energy of India’.
Today Indian Oil’s business interests encompass the entire hydrocarbon value chain from refining, pipeline transportation and marketing, to exploration and production of crude oil and gas, petrochemicals, gas marketing, alternative energy resources and globalisation of downstream operations. The company owns 35 per cent of the refining capacity in India and 71 per cent of the downstream sector pipelines through capacity.
Indian Oil owns and operates 11 of India’s 23 refineries that together have a refining capacity of 80.7 million metric tonnes per annum. It has a 12,850 km cross-country pipelines network with a throughput capacity to carry 93.7 million metric tonnes of crude oil to its refineries and petroleum products to high-demand centres. The pipeline network also carries 9.5 million metric standard cubic metres per day of gas.
The company’s 46,500 “customer touch points” crisscross the country, traversing rough terrains and near inaccessible rural heartlands of India. Its retail network also includes 26,000 fuel stations, including 7,000 Kisan Seva Kendra outlets. IOC’s Indane LPG reaches 11 crore households in more than 6,250 markets, through a network of more than 9,550 distributors. Through the XII Plan period (2012-17), IOC invested Rs 70,054 crore to enhance capacity of its refineries, pipelines, marketing infrastructure and acquire E&P assets.
All through its very profitable journey in marketing petroleum products in a market with a gargantuan demand, Indian Oil has consistently ploughed back its profits into building assets. Its phenomenal income and formidable accumulation of assets keep the petroleum behemoth No. 2 in the BW Real 500 rankings for several years in a row.