BPC profit down as global oil price up

The Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation's (BPC) profit has come down drastically as the oil price globally is witnessing an uptrend despite the unrelenting coronavirus pandemic.

The corporation now counts a profit of only Tk 0.25-0.30 per litre in diesel, which was around Tk 3.0 per litre in February.

It, however, incurs a loss of roughly Tk 6.0 per litre in furnace oil trade and makes a profit of around Tk 2.0 per litre in octane trading.

Diesel retails at Tk 65 per litre, furnace oil at Tk 41 per litre, kerosene at Tk 65, octane at Tk 89 and petrol at Tk 86 in domestic market.

The corporation sells around 15,000 tonnes of diesel a day in the domestic market, said a senior official.

Diesel is the key petroleum product that the BPC mostly imports from the global market.

Among other products, it imports a nominal quantity of furnace oil, marine fuel and octane to meet the local demand.

The state corporation, however, makes a profit of around Tk 5.0 per litre in octane trading.

The price of Brent crude, the benchmark in global oil price, now hovers around $64 per barrel as of April 22, which was as low as $19.33 on April 21, 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic.

The BPC annually imports 5.0-million tonnes of diesel from global suppliers and gets 900,000 tonnes as the refined output from the country's lone crude oil refinery Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL).

The corporation meets most of its furnace oil demand from the ERL that produces around 350,000 tonnes annually after refining crude oil.

Most of the demand for octane, petrol and kerosene are made from ERL's output and local petrochemical companies and condensate fractionation plants.

During the steepest price fall in oil globally last year, the BPC profited Tk 16 per litre in diesel and Tk 5.50 per litre in the trading of other products in the domestic market.

The profit was calculated after deducting value-added tax and taxes against the import of petroleum products.

Due to storage bottlenecks and sharp fall in local consumption, the BPC could not reap the benefits of the oil price fall, said sources.

The BPC was incurring losses before the spread of the novel coronavirus disease, Covid-19, last year as the oil prices were soaring high.

Apart from diesel, the BPC annually imports around 1.30-million tonnes of crude oil, 200,000 tonnes of furnace oil and 50,000 tonnes of octane.

The BPC alone procures 85 per cent of the country's oil requirement, with the rest by the private sector.

Officials said the BPC racked up hefty profits riding on a sharp fall in oil prices in the international market during 2014-2017.

After 2017, its fiscal status moved ups and downs with the volatile oil prices.

The corporation had counted losses every year since FY 2001-02 until FY 2013-14.

The BPC has paid around Tk 90 billion of its 'idle money' to the government exchequer over the past one year since March last year.

It paid Tk 50 billion in the last fiscal year (FY) 2019-2020 and the remaining Tk 40 billion in the current FY 2020-21 until March 2021.

It will have to pay Tk 10 billion more to finance ministry by June this year.