Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) Refuels Sri Lankan Airlines at Indian Airport

New Delhi, India, 2022-Aug-02 — /EPR Network/ — BPCL, one of the India’s OMCs has refueled more than 100 aircrafts of Sri Lankan Airlines at Indian Airports. The flights were refueled in India’s southern cities of Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai and Kochi. The company has been refueling the long-haul flights of Sri Lankan Airlines for around last 15 days.

 

According to BPCL on Twitter

“United with Sri Lanka! We are pleased to support Sri Lankan Airlines, with refueling of their long-haul flights at Indian airports, to overcome the Jet Fuel shortage in their country. So far, more than 100 flights have been refueled at #Trivandrum, #Chennai & #Kochi airports.”

 

BPCL further added “These refueling have been done over the last fortnight by mobilizing the assets and manpower for the on time service, at a very short notice.

We have been associated with @flysrilankan for over a decade, as their refueling partners.”

 

What Went Wrong With Sri Lanka?

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis began in March 2022 and later the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history.

Right now Sri Lanka is running out of everything foreign currency, aviation fuel, Food, Fertilizers, Medicines etc. They don’t have money to pay for anything. The food production in the last harvest season was 40% lower than the last year.

 

How the Crisis is Impacting Sri Lanka’s Aviation Sector?

With the looming fuel crisis, Sri Lankan Airlines told their employees that the flight operations will be impacted until this month.

Sri Lankan Management issued an internal memo to its employees last week saying that the airline ran out of aviation fuel on June 29^th and due to this, services will be affected.

Sri Lankan Aviation Authority (CAA) issued a notice on June 28^th asking airlines to carry fuel for their return journeys. This is because Sri Lanka’s Oil and Gas Company, CPC had no money to import required jet fuel into the country.

 

How India is Helping Sri Lanka?

In this crisis India had to step in and help Sri Lanka on all fronts.

• Indian quickly provided around $3.5 billion as credit and currency swap.
• As part of the credit line, it has dispatched several shipments of much needed fuel, food and medicines to Sri Lanka.
• Government of Tamil Nadu has also sent shipment of food and medicines.

 

Why Helping Sri Lanka is Important for India?

• India has been one of the major trade partners of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka imports lots of product especially food items from India.
• Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority shares close cultural and ethnic ties with India.
• Most importantly by helping Sri Lanka, India wants to keep China out of the country.

 

How This Crisis is Helping BPCL?

Spike in Landings from Sri Lanka flights boosted ATF sales of Indian OMCs like BPCL, IOC and HPCL. The additional demand of ATF will boost revenue of the OMCs.

According to BPCL spokesperson “We have been refueling Sri Lankan Airlines for some time now. Since July 4th, Air Arabia and Gulf Air flights from Colombo have also started buying fuel from us at Trivandrum; they are together buying around 30,000-40,000 liters per day”