Crude production reaches near normal rates

NEW DELHI: India's crude oil production and refinery runs reached near normal rates on Sunday after oil sector officials ended a three-day strike on Friday, government and company officials said.The strike by thousands of oil industry officials hit operations at refineries and oil and gas fields and caused shortages.It was called off after the government took a tough stand and companies dismissed some strikers."Situation is more or less normal. It is the same as it was before the strike," India's oil secretary R. S. Pandey told reporters at the country's biggest oil conference Petrotech.Indian Oil Corp's seven refineries were operating at almost full capacity on Sunday except for the 260,000 barrels per day Koyali refinery at Gujarat, the firm's director of refineries B. N. Bankapur said."All our refinery operations are normal, except the Gujarat refinery. There is some problems in product upliftment," he said, adding the refinery is operating at 70 percent capacity."We have deliberately kept the run rate low and in few days the refinery should be running at full capacity".He said fuel oil and low sulphur heavy stock supplies from the Koyali refinery to Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Corp and Gujarat Electricity Board had gone down in recent weeks, leading to inventory build up.IOC's 240,000 bpd Panipat refinery, 160,000 bpd Mathura refinery, 120,000 bpd Haldia plant along with Koyali refinery were affected by the strike.Oil and gas production by state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp, which declined due to the strike, was gradually returning to normal, the company's head R.S. Sharma said on Sunday.Oil production from ONGC's western offshore fields was about 310,000 barrels a day on Sunday compared with the normal 342,000 bpd, he said.Sharma said natural gas output from the western offshore fields was 28 million cubic metres a day as of Sunday compared with the normal rates of 45 MMCMD.ONGC's gas processing plant at Hazira was shut due to the strike, and Sharma said the plant would reach full capacity in about two days.Pandey said natural gas supplies had not normalised yet. "Gas supplies would be normal by tonight".Meanwhile, gas firm Petronet LNG's director of finance Amitava Sengupta said his firms's 10 million tonnes a year LNG terminal in Western India would start producing about 22 MMCMD regassified natural gas from Monday.Petronet brought its terminal online three days ahead of schedule on Friday to help to help ease a natural gas shortage caused by strike.

OPEC to reduce oil output if crude prices fall further

TEHRAN: OPEC could decide to reduce oil output again at its meeting in March if crude prices fall further, Iran's representative to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was quoted as saying on Sunday.OPEC agreed last month to cut production by a record 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), taking total curbs since September to 4.2 million bpd, the equivalent of 5 percent of global oil supply."If oil prices continue to fall, cutting production at the March 2009 meeting would not be unlikely," Iran's OPEC governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi told the oil ministry website SHANA."A fourth OPEC production cut in the March meeting would not be beyond expectation," he said.Oil prices fell 2 percent to below $41 a barrel on Friday after data showing a big rise in U.S. unemployment deepened the gloomy outlook for the world's biggest oil consumer.Oil prices have tumbled more than $100 from a record peak above $147 a barrel last July as the global economic downturn hit demand for fuel."The impact of OPEC's recent production cut in the market should be evaluated and in case of being ineffective in preventing crude price falls, OPEC's efforts will continue until the crude market reaches a stable condition," Khatibi said.