Sales rise for India's top explorer but Bharat and Hindustan's fortunes fall.

(From Lloyds List)

EVEN as the bottom line of India's leading explorer-producer Oil ' Natural Gas Corp rose by 11% for the third quarter of fiscal 2005-06, two of the country's leading refiners, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, made losses in excess of Rs10bn ($227.5m) each, writes Shirish Nadkarni in Mumbai.

ONGC's net profit for the October to December 2005 quarter rose to Rs38.88bn, compared to the post-tax profit of Rs34.93bn in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

The rise in profit was aided by a 3% increase in the company's sales turnover to Rs125.48bn for the quarter in review, despite a government subsidy payout of Rs28.43bn, which was bitterly opposed by the ONGC chairman Subir Raha.

'Despite the tragic loss of the Bombay High oil platform in July 2006, our oil and gas production has been moving up; and further increases are expected in the final quarter of fiscal 2005-06,' said Mr Raha.

ONGC's crude production during the third quarter of the ongoing fiscal went down by 10.3% to 6.37m tonnes from 7.1m tonnes in the corresponding period last year.

The production of natural gas and value-added products, too, declined. Natural gas output dropped 1.9% to 6.32bn cu m, from 6.44 ...