Refining margins would have been higher had contamination incident not happened: HPCL CMD

Hindustan Petroleum’s gross refining margins (GRM) in the quarter ended December 31, 2025 would have been higher had the chloride contamination not happened at the Mumbai refinery, chairman & managing director (CMD) Vikas Kaushal told investors in a conference call Thursday (January 22, 2026).

“If we did not have the incident, we [GRM] would have been $3.5 per barrel higher in Mumbai, and overall, we would have been at $10.24 per barrel [instead of $8.85 per barrel] in the quarter,” Mr. Kaushal told investors.

In October 2025, the Mumbai-headquartered refiner had informed that a part of the crude oil it had received from a supplier, that is, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, had been discovered to be carrying “very high salt and chloride content in the [acquired] crude oil”. A part of the refinery had to be shut down temporarily thought it returned to operating at full capacity, Mr. Kaushal had told investors in the conference call in 2025.

Mr. Kaushal informed Thursday (January 22, 2026) that “the issue is fully behind us”. “There are only residual matters to be solved which are more of financial and commercial, but the asset is running back at full and the run-rate GRMs would be what they ought to be for an asset of that scale and class,” he said.

On Wednesday (January 21, 2026), the Mumbai-headquartered refiner had informed that consolidated net profit of the company rose by approximately 57.7% on a year-over-year basis to ₹4,011 crore in the December-end quarter fuelled an improvement in gross refining margins during the period.

(At the time of writing, scrips were trading 0.8% lower at ₹425.50 apiece on the BSE and about 0.9% lower at ₹425.30 apiece on the NSE.)