The company's net profit for the fiscal just gone by, should stagnate at around Rs 1,000 crore, though. During 1997-98, the public sector gas transmission company had earned a net profit of Rs 1,020 crore.Gail chairman and managing director, CR Prasad told newspersons here on Wednesday that he expected the company to earn a sales turnover of Rs 6,800 crore for the 1998-99 fiscal, which is 24.7 per cent higher than the previous year's turnover of Rs 5,736 crore. The gross operating margin for the year should be Rs 1,486 crore, or 43 per cent higher than in 1997-98, when Gail's gross margin was Rs 1,041 crore.

Even so, profits should remain at roughly the same levels as last year's, he said. The company's director, finance, JK Jain, pointed out that during 1997-98, Gail had received Rs 600 crore of arrears from the gas pool. Last year,Gail's dues from the gas pool account were to the tune of Rs 90 crore. The 1997-98 profits had been boosted by other income, but last year's earnings were the fallout of higher operations.

Despite setbacks, like a 22 day shut-down at the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) gas-fields, Gail's gas sales were slightly higher last year at 57.64mmscmd (million metric standard cubic metres per day.) During 1997-98, the company had sold 54.93mmscmd of gas.

The fillip in gas transmission was possible because of the nearly two-fold capacity enhancement of the HBJ (Hazira-Bijaipur-Jagdishpur) gas pipeline. The capacity of the pipeline increased to 33.4mmscmd from 18.2mmscmd. Presently, 90 per cent of Gail's earnings come from marketing gas, whi1le the remaining 10 per cent comes from producing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The company's liquid hydrocarbon production (including LPG) was 7.09 lakh tonne compared to 6.35 lakh tonne the year before. In the years ahead, said Jain, only 80 per cent of Gail's salesturnover would come from gas sales. Producing LPG would in the long run contribute to 8 per cent of Gail's earnings and the rest of the company's income would come from its petrochemicals business. The company, recently, commissioned a three lakh tonne per annum-capacity petrochemicals plant at Pata in UP. The cracker capacity of the unit would be shortly upgraded to five lakh tonne. Gas sales would continue to determine Gail's earnings in the fiscal beginning Thursday, when it expects its turnover to stagnate at around Rs 7,000 crore.

Prasad said that Gail based its turnover projections on ONGC's gas profile and the ONGC projects gas availability to go down to 54mmscmd from 57mmscmd last year.