Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), the biggest oil and gas explorer and producer in the country, booked a lower net profit for the April-June quarter from a year earlier on the back of falling oil prices and basically flat production.
ONGC reported a net profit of $917 million (80.24 billion Indian rupees) for the first quarter of its 2025/2026 fiscal year, down by 10% compared to the same period of the previous financial year.
Oil prices slumped in April to June by about 10% amid high volatility due to the U.S. tariff policies and the Israel-Iran war.
ONGC’s crude realizations slumped to $67.87 per barrel from $80.64 per barrel in April-June 2024. As a result, revenues fell by 9.3% to $3.65 billion (320 billion rupees).
At the same time, production remained almost unchanged, with crude output at 4.683 million tons, slightly higher than the 4.629 million tons pumped in the April-June quarter of 2024. Natural gas output was also flattish at 4.846 billion cubic meters in the past quarter.
ONGC plans to diversify in refining, petrochemicals, LNG trading, and renewable energy as it expects lower oil prices amid a looming crude supply glut, a senior executive said in March.
“Globally, we are heading to a glut in oil supplies which means prices will reduce,” Arunangshu Sarkar, director for strategy at ONGC, told Bloomberg in an interview at the end of March.
“It will be difficult for a company like ONGC to survive in a low oil-price regime and the new businesses provide a hedge for such a scenario,” the executive added.
ONGC is already on the lookout to book LNG regasification capacity on India’s western coast and is discussing gas offtake deals with city distributors.
A refinery is also in the plans for the state-run oil and gas explorer, the executive told Bloomberg, without giving details as the project is at a very early stage.
Reports emerged last year that ONGC is assessing plans for an $8.3-billion refinery plus petrochemicals project in the most populous Indian state to take advantage of growing fuel demand.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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