Looking at capex of Rs 14,000 crore in FY20, says HPCL's Surana

MK Surana, CMD of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL), spoke to CNBC-TV18 about the crude oil prices and the company's capex plans.

"Lower crude prices and strong cracks will help gross refining margins (GRMs)," Surana said on Tuesday.

According to him, rupee appreciation is helping domestic prices.

Talking about HPCL and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) deal, Surana said, “We hope to work on this in this financial year.”

On the capex front, Surana said, “HPCL has already got a well laid out capex plan. We have got both the refineries expansion, marketing infrastructure, certain pipelines and Rajasthan refineries are the major items of capex.”

“We are on track for these projects and the stability of the government definitely helps in terms of borrowing rates,” he added.

When asked about subsidy, the CMD said, “We have already got around Rs 4,000 crore after April out of the last year’s subsidy. It was around Rs 8,000 crore and we have already got Rs 4,000 crore out of it.”

“For FY20 we have a capex of around Rs 14,000 crore. Last year we had around Rs 10,000 crore because the projects which we aligned are already in advance stage. In fact BS-VI projects; we are supposed to be commissioned by this financial year itself to be ready to rollout BS-VI motor spirit (MS) and high-speed diesel (HSD) by April 1 and even Mumbai refinery expansion is also aligned along with that.”

“Therefore, we are coming towards a phase wherein next 2 years or so we will be completing these projects and we will be seeing the benefits of increased throughputs as well as increased GRMs on this,” added Surana.