Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) , India’s most-profitable company, is at risk of incurring a loss at its crude oil business for the first time as subsidy payments and production expenses rise. The cost of producing crude oil has increased 5 percent, while buyers are paying 4 percent less for the product, squeezing margins, according to Chairman Sudhir Vasudeva. ONGC may give 137 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) as discounts on its crude oil sales to government-run refiners including Indian Oil Corp. (IOCL) for the three months through Sept. 30, Vasudeva said. That’s 11 percent higher than a year earlier. “The narrowing margins at some point is going to affect our growth, our capex, and our business,” Vasudeva, 59, said by phone from New Delhi . “It’s difficult to sustain, difficult to plan for the future.” Pretax margins at ONGC, which is responsible for bolstering India’s energy supplies, have […]