NEW DELHI, November 21: Oil sector stocks shot into limelight on the bourses after the petroleum ministry announced a series of reforms to phase out the administered price mechanism (APM) over a period of four years. The major gainers on the Bombay Stock Exchange included scrips of public sector companies like HPCL, BPCL and ONGC. Reliance Petroleum, MRPL and Cochin Refineries also witnessed a rise in prices.

Indian Oil, however, bucked the trend by registering a drop.

Leading the pack of gainers was HPCL, which shot up from Rs 444 to Rs 473. Volumes also improved from the previous day's 75,000 shares to 82,000 shares. On NSE, the scrip gained 4.04 per cent to close at Rs 468.Although the rise in BPCL price was marginal (from Rs 413 to Rs 418), it was accompanied by a spurt in volumes, which moved up from 51,000 to 2.48 lakh shares. While ONGC moved up by Rs 12 to end at Rs 315, volumes dropped form 7,600 shares to 4,000 shares.

Among the private sector oil companies, Cochin Refineries and Reliance Petroleum rose by Rs 5 and Rs 1.20, respectively. On NSE, Reliance Petroleum was among the top five gainers and clocked a price appreciation of 3.08 per cent to end at Rs 20.10.

While the price of Essar Oil remained static at Rs 13.75, volumes jumped from 700 shares to 3,400 shares.

Indian Oil dropped by Rs 34 to Rs 675 following not-so-encouraging results announced by the company on Friday. The first-half net profit improved by over seven per cent to Rs 904 crore as compared to Rs 844 crore reported in the first half of 1996-97.

Income from sales and operations was Rs 29,592 crore, an increase of 5.8 per cent over the previous year's figure of Rs 27,967 crore. Product sales crossed 21.13 million tonnes as compared to 19.95 million tonnes during the corresponding period last year registering a growth of over 5.9 per cent. Indian Oil has projects on hand of about Rs 13,000 crore and investments of over Rs 33,000 crore are proposed.

On Thursday, the petroleum ministry unveiled a series of measures to further push the reform process in the oil sector. Dismantling of APM and introduction of market-determined price mechanism will commence in 1998-99 and continue over a period of four years. This will include reduction and rationalisation of the duty structure, decanilisation of crude imports for users and phased reduction of subsidies on LPG and kerosene.

Besides, prices of certain petroleum products like bitumen, naphtha and fuel oil will be decontrolled with immediate effect.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.