Essar Oil sees improvement in retail, refining throughput

Retail sales for the company also saw a significant jump of 75% in FY17

Essar Oil Ltd’s refinery throughput grew by almost 10% to 20.95 million tonnes, compared to 19.10 million tonnes in the previous fiscal, the company said in a press statement. Retail sales for the company also saw a significant jump of 75% in the last financial year.

“The refinery throughput grew by almost 10% to 20.95 million tonnes, compared to 19.10 million tonnes in the previous fiscal. Retail sales went up by 75% to 2.8 million KL from 1.6 million KL in FY 2015-16,” the company said in its statement.

On its fuel retail network, the company said its retail network grew by almost 67%. Essar Oil had 3,499 operational outlets as on 31 March 2017, while 2,631 others were under various stages of implementation, the statement said.

“This year, we achieved the highest ever throughput since the commencement of commercial operations at the Vadinar Refinery in May 2008,” said Lalit Kumar Gupta, managing director and chief executive officer, Essar Oil.

Essar Oil entered into a $10.9 billion stake sale deal with Russian oil major Rosneft in October 2016, which includes acquisition of Essar Oil’s 20 million tonne (MT) refinery in Gujarat and its retail outlets. The Russian oil major is doing the acquisition in a consortium of oil trading firm Trafigura and private investment group United Capital Partners. The consortium is set to pay an additional of $2 billion for the acquisition of Vadinar Port too.