India's oil import bill in the current fiscal is expected to be 93 per cent higher than that in the previous year.
According to minister for petroleum and natural gas Ram Naik, the country's oil import bill during 1999-2000 is expected to be around $12.525 billion, against $6.482 billion last year.
Naik, in a written reply during question time in the Lok Sabha yesterday, said the deficit in the oil pool account by the end of the current fiscal was expected to be around Rs 5,000 crore.
The minister said that to reduce the import of petroleum products, the government was considering steps to increase crude oil production in the country through application of improved technologies and development of new fields, expansion of the existing refineries and by setting up of new refineries in the public, joint and private sectors. It would also lay emphasis on petroleum conservation measures and use of alternative sources of energy like coal bed methane to achieve this objective.
This gives a lie to the earlier assessment of petroleum ministry officials that the high oil prices are "artificial" and will fall to their realistic levels shortly.
The officials had also not agreed with the finance ministry's assessment that the country's oil import bill this year will exceed $10 billion because of crude prices at that time crossing the $21 a barrel mark. The officers were of the view that the prices would come down to around $15 a barrel by December, and the oil import bill would be around the ministry's earlier assessment of $6.1 billion.
While the petroleum ministry had suggested the average price of imported crude during the year at $16 a barrel, the finance ministry, in its latest estimates of the oil import bill, had taken the average price at $19.5 a barrel.
Petroleum ministry officials had argued that though crude oil prices had gone beyond $21a barrel, the country had contracted for large imports before the prices went beyond $16 a barrel. According to them, the average price of imported crude oil during the current fiscal would thus work out to around $16 a barrel.
