New Delhi: The growing disquiet over China could see oil investors headed to India, said a top executive at a refiner that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has put up for sale.
“The choices of investing in oil sector will be limited when the world becomes normal and India will be the only happening alternative,” N. Vijayagopal, finance director at Bharat Petroleum Corp. said in an interview from Mumbai. “Most of the Western countries will be very afraid of getting into China. So, where else they can go?”
Many nations, including the US, are coming together to counter what they say is China’s growing threat to global trade, security and human rights. That gives an opportunity for India to attract investments and push some of its state-run assets such as Bharat Petroleum, known as BPCL, to global investors when the world emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, almost every big oil company from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Royal Dutch Shell Plc have investments across China’s energy chain, with newer commitments coming in from companies such as Saudi Aramco to tap the world’s biggest energy consumer.
In India, a nation feted for its ever-rising oil appetite, fuel demand took a major hit from a national lockdown, declared in March, to control the virus outbreak. However, a series of relaxations helped it recover much of the lost demand within a short span although a return to growth is still a long way off.
Refineries, including BPCL, that had slashed processing are now ramping up capacities. “My refineries are running at almost 83% of normal capacities and our sales were about 76% of normal sales in May,” he said. “So, there’s no reason for us to be pessimistic about our capability to come back to normal.”
