The oil industry has a regulator of sorts in Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. But it confines itself to technological issues and avoids economic issues; and on policy it keeps close to the government and does not choose to take an independent view. 

STATE OF COMPETITION IN THE INDIAN PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

Sponsor: Competition Commission of India New Delhi.  January 2009

Ashok Desai

Laveesh Bhandari

Ramrao Mundhe

Maj. General Bhupindra Yadav

Special Thanks to

Experts at the Competition Commission of India

Payal Malik

This paper is about the Indian petroleum refining industry. But this industry is extremely open; trade flows are large compared to production. And there is considerable overlap between oil production and refining internationally, and to some extent in India. So we begin with a brief discussion of the international petroleum industry and its components – refining being one of them.

Petroleum is extracted from underground reserves; then it is cracked or “refined” into end products for various uses. The petroleum industry thus has two parts: an oil exploration and production industry upstream and a refinery industry downstream. Most oil producers also own refineries. But the reverse is not true; a high proportion of oil is sold to refinery companies that do not produce crude oil. 

Sedimentary rocks in which hydrocarbons are trapped often hold gas, sometimes in association with crude oil and sometimes alone. It consists mostly of methane, which is lighter than air and toxic. It therefore requires airtight tanks for storage and similarly leak-proof pipes or trucks for transport, which raise its capital costs. Associated gas was flared in early years of the industry; it is still flared at remote or minor wells where the cost of its collection and transport would be high, or often reinjected into the oilfield to maintain pressure which forces oil up to the surface. But where the quantities are large enough, natural gas is mined and traded. It is mainly used as an industrial, domestic and vehicular fuel.

Motor vehicles run almost exclusively on petrol and high-speed diesel oil, both fuels derived from mineral oil – although they can be modified to run on certain biofuels. Vehicles are so widely dispersed that they require an extensive distribution system for these two refinery products. As motor vehicle use has spread across the world, it has brought along with it petrol pumps, logistics, storage and supply of fuels. There is thus a third part of the petroleum industry downstream from refineries which distributes the products. It is owned by refineries in most countries. But this is not inevitable. Some countries have distribution chains that are independent of producers and refiners; and in countries which do not have refineries, distribution is undertaken by either local or foreign oil companies. 

Oil has collected in pools and seeps for thousands of years. The Chinese are recorded as having extracted oil from wells 800 feet deep through bamboo pipes in 347; they used it to evaporate brine and make salt. American Indians used to put it to medicinal uses. Persians, Macedonians and Egyptians used tars to waterproof ships. Babylonians used asphalt in the eighth century to construct the city’s walls, towers and roads. But the easily available oil was not put to any mass use because the crude itself was not a good fuel; it gave out much soot and smoke. A distillation process using a retort was invented by Rhazes (Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi) in Persia in the 9th century; liquid heated in it vapourized, passed through a curved spout and condensed in another container. The process could be used to make kerosene; but it was more often used to make alcohol and essence of flowers for perfume. It was a batch process, its fuel consumption was high, and it was not equally efficient at distilling kerosene from all crudes. 

A more efficient and reliable distillation process came out of a series of inventions after 1846. The last invention was the invention of oil fractionation in 1854 by Benjamin Silliman, a professor of science in Yale. It used a vertical column which separated components more efficiently, and which could be used continuously.

 Oil was first produced in Titusville, Pennsylvania (USA) in 1859 by one Edwin L Drake, who refined it into kerosene, which was then used as an illuminant. Electricity did not emerge as an illuminant till the Edison Electric Light Company was founded in 1878. Well into the 20th century, kerosene, gas and electricity continued to compete as illuminants. Whilst the use of gas as an illuminant has virtually disappeared, a large population, especially in India, continues to use kerosene as illuminant.

The invention of the motor car by Karl Friedrich Benz in 1885 created a market for petrol, a new refined product (petrol is called Benzin in Germany, but is not named after Karl Benz). In 1898, Rudolf Diesel invented an engine in which oil was ignited by compression; the diesel engine he invented came to power larger vehicles, principally trucks and buses. Diesel engines used a different fuel, which was named diesel oil. After this, the production and use of motor vehicles spread rapidly in the United States, especially after 1908 when Henry Ford began mass manufacture of his Model T; and petroleum and diesel oil became the most important refined products, first in the US and progressively across the world.

However, only a certain proportion of crude oil can be converted into motor fuels. The demand for kerosene, the original distillate extracted from crude oil, has gone down with the spread of electricity. So other refined products have been developed, and non-vehicular uses developed for them. Some of the products differ little from motor fuels; for instance, naphtha, extensively used to make nitrogenous fertilizers and chemicals, is little different from petrol; and jet fuel is very similar to kerosene. Thus, refineries find markets for their products in many industries other than motor transport (Appendix-table C4).

The Industry in India

India imports three-quarters of the crude it refines (Appendix-table D1). It exports refinery products (Appendix-table E2); its net exports are roughly ten per cent of production. The government operates an elaborate set of cross-subsidies to insulate domestic from international prices; such cross-subsidies have serious effects on the finances of the Indian companies (Appendix-table I2) involved, and influence competition amongst them. The oil companies, both public and private, are so large a part of the economy that the cross-subsidy regime cannot be sustained in all circumstances; sooner or later, the government has to bring domestic prices closer to international prices. Hence the state of competition in the international market and international prices are important for the domestic market.

In Section II, which follows, we give an introduction to refinery technology, products, and the markets they serve. In Section III, we briefly describe the global exploration, production and refining industries.  In Section IV, we describe the Indian market structure in terms of the companies operating in it, their products and markets.  In Sections V, VI, VII and VIII, we outline the market structure in exploration and production, user industries, refining and gas respectively. In Section IX, we turn to the major barriers to competition and to the steps that need to be taken if greater competition is to be introduced in the domestic market for refined products.