CPCL MD Arvind Kumar among 10 in race for Indian Oil Corporation's top job

Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL) managing director Arvind Kumar is among 10 in the race to become the next chairman of India's largest oil company Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).

Kumar and nine others have been called for an interview by the government headhunter Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) on May 16, according to a shortlist notice of the PSEB.

PESB will interview and recommend a candidate to replace incumbent chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya who superannuates on attaining 60 years of age on August 31 this year.

Those shortlisted for the interview include five executive directors of IOC, Container Corporation of India Ltd (Concor) director (finance) Manoj Kumar Dubey and NMDC Ltd director (finance) Amitava Mukherjee.

Two Indian Railway Services officers -- Yatendra Kumar and Ranjan Prakash Thakur -- have also been shortlisted for the interview, the PESB list showed.

IOC executive directors called for interview are Sandeep Jain, Anna Durai, Sailendra Kurumaddali, Sanjay Parashar and Gur Prasad.

No existing directors of IOC applied as most did not have the requisite two years of service left before retirement. Of the six directors, only director (marketing) Satish Kumar Vaduguri was eligible as his retirement is in July 2025 but he did not apply.,

Director (human resources) R K Mohapatra superannuates in December this year and director (research and development) S S V Ramakumar retires in July end this year. A month before that director (pipelines) D S Nanaware retires while director (refineries) Sukla Mistry and director (planning and business development) Sujoy Choudhury superannuate in April 2024 and August 2024, respectively.

The post of director (finance) is vacant.

According to the procedure, the candidate shortlisted by PESB will first go to the parent ministry, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. After getting clearance from anti-corruption bodies like CVC and CBI, the candidature would be moved to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for approval.

The entire process takes anywhere between 3 to 4 months.

IOC refines crude oil extracted from below ground, into products like petrol, diesel, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and aviation turbine fuels. It also makes petrochemicals and retails CNG.

Besides being the backbone of Indian fuel supplies, IOC is pivoting India's energy transition - the shift from fossil-based systems of energy production and consumption -including oil, natural gas and coal, to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, as well as lithium-ion batteries.

IOC owns and operates 10 oil refineries with a combined capacity of 80.6 million tonnes, making up for almost a third of India's 251.2 million tonnes of refining capacity. It also owns 36,285 petrol pumps out of 86,855 pumps in the country. Besides, it owns half of the nation's 25,386 LPG distributors. It runs 131 out of 283 aviation fuel stations in the country.