NEW DELHI: Shrikant Madhav Vaidya took over the reins of India’s largest refiner and fuel retailer as the Coronavirus pandemic set off the oil industry’s gravest crisis in 100 years. But the challenge presents new opportunities to de-risk the fuel business, the IndianOil chairman tells Sanjay Dutta in an interview. Excerpts:
Q: Covid-19 exposed the fault line in fuel marketing when demand tanked during the lockdown, hitting refinery operation and bottom line. How has the shock changed your business outlook?
A: We realised that petrochemical expansion can de-risk our fuel business. We could keep running our refineries (even when fuel demand is down). IOC was a late entrant in the petrochemical business because we were not allowed to earlier. Our first project was the Gujarat LAP project. Then the next big one on a global scale was the PXPTA unit in Panipat. But we really forayed into polymers with the Panipat naphtha cracker in 2010. Today we are No. 2 (producer) but nowhere near the No. 1. So there’s plenty of opportunities as petrochemical is the building block for everything from a kitchen jar, textile yarn to PPE kits.
