India’s Top Refiner Cashes In as Oil Prices Slide

India’s largest state-owned refiner, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), saw its net profit surge four times for the quarter ended December 31 compared to a year earlier as falling crude oil prices boosted refining margins.

Indian Oil reported on Thursday a standalone net profit of $1.34 billion (121.26 billion Indian ‌rupees) for the October-December quarter, which is the third quarter of its 2025/2026 fiscal year ending on March 31, 2026. That’s a fourfold jump compared to the net profit of $318 million (28.74 billion rupees) for the same quarter of the previous fiscal year, as crude oil prices slumped in the latter part of 2025 by about $10 per barrel from a year earlier.

Indian Oil and other major refiners in India benefited from the lower price of their raw material and from the cheap crude they procured from Russia. The low price of the crude input boosted refining margins and fattened profits for Indian refiners.

Moreover, India’s fuel demand jumped in the last two months of 2025, further boosting the sales and earnings of refiners.

Total fuel demand in India, the world’s third-biggest crude oil importer, surged in November to the highest level in six months as construction and agriculture activity picked up after the end of the monsoon season.

In December, demand then jumped to a record high for a single month.

Indian Oil’s average gross refining margin (GRM) for the period April – December 2025 jumped to $8.41 per barrel, more than double compared to $3.69 a barrel for the same period of 2024.

Going forward, Indian Oil and the other Indian refiners may have to pay higher prices for the crude they import as the situation with Russian barrels is not clear yet, following the U.S.-India trade deal that depends on India significantly scaling back imports of oil from Russia, which has become the country’s top supplier.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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