New Delhi, January 16: At a late night press meet on October 5, 1999 to announce a 40 per cent hike in the ex-storage point price of diesel, Oil Coordination Committee (OCC) executive director MS Ramachandran had said, ``after October we do not plan imports of diesel.''The country had till then imported 4.1 million tonne of its largest selling petroleum product, compared to 10.48 million tonne in the whole of 1998-99 and 14.07 million tonne in the 1997-98 fiscal. Ramachandran was obviouisly pegging his projections on the 22 million tonne of new refining capacity that had gone on stream just then and was about to throw up fresh gallons of middle distillates, like diesel, jet fuel and kerosene.
Think tanks in government and industry had actually predicted an ``exportable surplus'' of 2.5 million tonne of diesel and 1.55 million tonne of petrol by January this year, which is now. There are no invoices for exports in sight as yet.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.