For eight successive years - between 1999-2000 and 2006-07 - the port at Visakhapatanam occupied the number one slot among the twelve major ports in the country. In 2007-08, it lost that position to Kandla. Against Visakhapatanam's 64.59 million tonnes, Kandla managed to handle a little more at 64.89 million tonnes of cargo. The Kolkata port (including Haldia) slipped to the third position at 57.28 million tonnes.
One common factor could be held responsible for the change in the major ports' pecking order in 2007-08 - the volume of crude oil cargo handled by them.
Kandla is believed to have moved ahead of Visakhapatanam primarily because it managed to get more crude oil cargo, estimated to be about ten million tonnes. Thus, its cargo handling performance improved from 52.98 million tonnes in 2006-07 to 64.89 million tonnes.
Similarly, Kolkata's slow growth in cargo handling (from 55 million tonnes to 57.28 million tonnes in this period) could be attributed to its failure to get a larger share in the crude oil cargo being handled by the major ports.
More significantly, Kolkata might lose almost ten million tonnes of crude oil cargo annually in the coming years if Indian Oil Corporation implements its plan to divert its crude oil imports through Paradip.
The point to be noted here is that in a growing economy such as India's, the importance of crude oil will increasingly manifest itself in several ways and often in unexpected quarters. The port sector is just one of them. There was a time when an Indian port's performance would get a boost depending on its ability to attract and handle larger quantities of imported foodgrains.
Ports on India's eastern coast benefitted during those days. Today, it is the crude oil. And the ports that have the capacity and the deep draft to attract ships with higher tonnage are likely to benefit more than those which do not enjoy these facilities.
Take for instance another area - the foreign trade sector. In 2007-08, crude oil and petroleum product imports, estimated at over $90 billion, accounted for 38 per cent of India's total imports. That was huge.
There is little doubt that this import bill will rise in the coming years, with the crude oil price showing no signs of settling below the $100-a-barrel mark. Note that the average price of India's crude oil imports last year was only around $80 a barrel and in the current year, it would average around $100 a barrel.
You may look at it another way. India's total trade deficit last year was about $80 billion, a little less than its total outgo on imports of crude oil and petroleum products. And if you exclude exports ($26.5 billion) and imports ($90 billion) of crude oil and petroleum products from its total foreign trade ($156 billion of exports and $236 billion of imports), India's trade deficit for last year appears a much more benign $17 billion.
One might argue that these are only statistical scenarios with no connection with reality. But the point here again is to note how crude oil has become the single largest factor in the country's foreign trade as well.
Even global food crisis owes its origin to crude oil. The rising crude oil prices were largely responsible for diversion of large areas of land in developed and developing countries for growing crops that would be more useful for producing bio-fuels. This has meant lower foodgrains availability.
In addition, an estimated 30 million tonnes of corn are reported to have been used for bio-fuels in the US last year. That is how the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated an 11-per cent growth in the utilisation of cereals in the US, much higher than the 1-2 per cent growth witnessed in China and India.
In such a scenario, either the crude oil prices will soften and the pressure on land for growing more crops for bio-fuels will ease, or the crude oil prices will stay firm and the food crisis will go from bad to worse.
In either case, the impact of crude oil on the world economy will only increase in the days to come. Numbered are the days of exploring conventional solutions like productivity increases, development of alternatives and technological innovations.
In many ways, this is one crucial difference between the way the latest round of rising crude oil prices has impacted economies across the globe and the way previous oil price hikes caused ripples in different sectors.
In the previous ones, there was this hope that the oil price spikes were temporary and soon they would settle down to what everybody thought were the normal levels.
Today, the current spike is accepted as a long-term reality and has impacted all aspects of the economy in different ways. The consensus is that there is no respite from this.
