GAIL Q2 profit slips 10% on rise in LPG subsidy

New Delhi: GAIL India, the nation’s biggest gas firm, today reported a 10 percent drop in its second-quarter net profit after a steep rise in its LPG subsidy outgo.

Net profit dropped to Rs 985.38 crore in July-September compared to Rs 1,094.41 crore a year earlier, GAIL Chairman and Managing Director B C Tripathi told reporters here. “Our profit is down primarily because of a 39 percent rise in outgo towards LPG subsidy,” he said adding the company paid Rs 786 crore to subsidises cooking gas (LPG) as compared to Rs 567 crore a year ago.

[caption id=“attachment_504363” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Turnover was up 17 percent at Rs 11,361 crore. Reuters[/caption]

GAIL along with state-owned explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) sell LPG and crude oil to refineries at a discount to partly compensate them for selling diesel and cooking fuel below cost.

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Turnover was up 17 percent at Rs 11,361 crore. Tripathi said the profit was also lower because the firm transmitted lesser natural gas owing to fall in output at Reliance Industries’ eastern offshore KG-D6 gas fields.

The fall in output at KG-D6 field meant that GAIL’s pipeline network was transporting 10 million standard cubic metres per day or a little less than 10 percent less volumes.

Tripathi said GAIL has already tied-up Rs 4,400-4,500 crore debt that it had planned to raise to fund part of the Rs 7,300 crore capital expenditure during the current fiscal.

GAIL, he said, has tied up import of 7 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet growing domestic demand and also plans to ship as many as 8 cargoes from the spot market during the remaining part of the year.

Also, the company board today approved nearly doubling of the Jamnagar-Loni LPG transmission pipeline to 4.5 million tonnes at a cost of about Rs 2,000 crore in next 36 months, he said. Giving segment-wise revenue, Tripathi said sales from natural gas trading increased 28 percent to Rs 9,697 crore, while revenue from natural gas transmission business was up marginally to Rs 984 crore as against Rs 980 crore in the corresponding period of previous year.

Sales from petrochemicals business fell to Rs 880 crore from Rs 938 crore. Natural gas sales declined to 80.70 mmscmd as against 83.64 mmscmd while gas transmission during the second quarter of the current financial year was 105.64 mmscmd against 118.62 MMSCMD in the corresponding period last year.

PTI