Even even though India’s crude imports and refinery utilisation levels remained robust in April, analysts at S&P Global Platts stated that the complete effect of demand destruction from the second wave of the coronavirus will get reflected only in May. Indian refiners shipped in cargoes contracted earlier and refrained from backing out of offers in April regardless of a second wave of the coronavirus triggering demand destruction fears.
“Just like last year, India’s refiners had been slow to respond as crudes were bought in advance,” Lim Jit Yang, advisor for Asia-Pacific oil markets at S&P Global Platts Analytics, stated, adding that “but as they started to realize the severity of demand impact from lockdown measures, they are expected to reduce runs and some have already done so as sales of the first half in May turned out to be very weak”. In April, Indian Oil Corporation had a refinery run price of 96.1%, which had dropped to 84% in the initially 7 days in May.
Crude oil imports enhanced by 10.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 18.3 million tonnes (MT) in the course of April 2021. The worth of imports having said that was greater by 183% to $8.5 billion. The Indian basket crude value averaged $63.4/barrel in the course of April against $19.90/barrel in the identical month a year ago. Owing to reduced international crude oil prices in the earlier half of the fiscal, worth of crude imports had fallen 38% y-o-y to $62.7 billion in FY21 even even though import volumes had decreased by about 13% annually to 198 MT.
Consumption of Petroleum goods fell to 17 MT in April, the lowest recorded due to the fact September 2020, signalling that the re-imposition of lockdown curbs with the second wave of the coronavirus in lots of locations has slowed industrial and industrial consumption. Diesel sales, which contribute to about 40% of the total consumption of petroleum goods, was 7.5% reduced in April than March.
Petrol sales have been the lowest due to the fact August 2020, and down 13% from March to 2.4 MT. Overall consumption of petroleum goods in the month was, having said that, 81.5% greater annually, primarily on a reduced base of abnormally muted sales in April 2020.