The Sultanate recorded a whopping 166% year-on-year increase in the production of regular (90) petrol during the first two months of the current year with output surging to 1.03 million barrels compared with 388,100 barrels produced last year, according to the latest data released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Super (95) petrol output too logged a 2.1% growth over the period to touch 3.43 million bbl as against 3.36 million bbl in 2015.
Last year, the aggregate output by Oman Oil Refineries & Petroleum Industries Co (Orpic) of regular and super petrol stood at 2.02 million bbl and 23.34 million bbl respectively. It may be noted that last year regular petrol accounted for just 2% of Orpic’s total petroleum products output, while super petrol had a share of 28%.
The first two months registered a 12.8% increase in the output of petroleum products (petrol, jet fuel, oils, LPG, propylene, naphtha, long residual and others taken together) compared with last year, with production increasing to 13.90 million bbl compared with 12.32 million achieved in 2015.
There has been a marked increase of 35.2% in the production of jet fuel (aviation fuel) by the end of February, which surged to 890,500 bbl from 658,400 bbl in the same period of 2015.
Fuel oil output, on the other hand, rose 33.9% to hit 258,400 bbl as against 193,000 bbl from 156,000 bbl last year. However, in the case of gas oil output, the growth rate was confined to 13.6% at 3.73 million bbl.
Meanwhile, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) production went up 15.8% to 446,700 bbl from 385,900 bbl recorded in the January-February period of 2015.
In contrast, Oman enhanced its SR Naphtha output by a significant 107.1% over the two months, driving production to 783,700 bbl compared with 378,400 bbl during the same period last year.
At the same time propylene production fell 11% to 198,700 bbl while long residual declined 6.6% to 3.05 million bbl. Other products showed a 59.4% slump in output over the first two months compared with last year figures.