The crisis in Japan also affected many factories and refineries, creating an upsurge in crude and metal imports from the other international suppliers. And as the rebuilding process gets underway, more oil and metal is being diverted to Japan, which has resulted in reduced supplies elsewhere in the world.
These developments have adversely impacted crude oil prices in the international markets.
India is not insulated from this global scenario. To an extent, government intervention is restricting/delaying increase in price of motor spirits.
However, Indian public sector refineries, which are the only source of petroleum and petroleum products, have already raised prices of all other petroleum based products.
According to Avinash Kawadkar, general manager for sales for chemicals at TechNova, the petroleum solvent situation is spiralling completely out of control. "On our part, we have followed our self-imposed guidelines, restricted price increase for petroleum solvent-based products, to exactly the increase in only the cost of raw materials used in our products."
"As a catalyst to encourage its customers to change over to ‘greener and safer’ options, TechNova has also held back the price increase on aliphatic washes," said Kawadkar.
"We have adopted a policy of staggered price revisions equivalent to direct raw material cost increases greater than 5%. In spite of the fact that raw material suppliers increase prices without notice we have been able to give advance notices to our customers," he added.
Restricted price increase may by far be the best option in the series of emergency preparedness for oil supply disruptions, there are other ways of coping with the situation.
Kawadkar said: "We have recently introduced AmberWash WM, an aromatic free product manufactured from imported solvent raw material, which has enabled us to offer price stability based on bulk international sourcing. Also, our R&D team is working on substitutes for petroleum solvents currently used in press washes."
Oil crisis impact the price of petroleum products
While uprising and internal conflicts in Libya, Yeman and other oil producing countries have lead to drastic reduction in oil exports from this region, a recent bomb explosion in Northern Iraq that destroyed major oil pipelines, has come as a warning that the crisis could well stretch short supply of oil to international markets.
