Oil & gas giants Essar Oil and state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) have reported swung back to black in the second quarter of current fiscal.

Essar Oil reported profit after tax of Rs 105 crore for the three months ended September 30, against a loss of Rs 419 crore in the corresponding period of previous year; while BPCL posted a net profit of Rs 5,034.79 crore, against a loss of Rs 3,229.27 in the year-ago period.

Essar Group's flagship oil & gas firm attributed the 27-time jump in its operating profit to a 66 per cent increase in refinery throughput and a 4-time rise in processing ultra-heavy crude.

L K Gupta, chief operating officer and managing director of Essar Oil, said, "With the completion of our optimisation programme at Vadinar, we were able to post a throughput of 5.07 million metric tonne."

Mr. Gupta added that the company's refinery had reached its full capacity of 20 million tonne per year, and the impact began to reflect in the form rising revenues from the past quarter.

Essar Oil's second quarter gross revenue jumped 67 per cent to Rs 23,023 crore, while Ebitda jumped 27 times to Rs 1,169 crore.

BPCL saw a considerable decline in expenses, from Rs 2,775.79 crore in the second quarter of previous fiscal to Rs 771.54 crore in same quarter of this fiscal. Stock in BPCL slipped 0.28 per cent to close at Rs 338.05 a share on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Friday.