Oil companies raise fuel prices
RETAIL PRICES OF PETROL AND DIESEL WERE FIRST RAISED BY ₹1.20 OVER 2 DAYS
nNEWDELHI: State-run fuel retailers have ended the 82-day freeze on daily rate revision by raising pump prices of petrol and diesel by ₹1.20 per litre in just two days since Sunday because of a surge in international oil prices after the producers’ cartel decided to extend record output cuts by one more month till the end of July.
Brent crude was trading at $41.39 a barrel on Monday, 114% higher than its low of $19.33 seen on April 21, 2020. However, retail prices of fuel did not fall in India with lower prices of crude because the government hiked levies and kept prices more or less the same.
Retail prices of petrol and diesel were first raised by 60 paise a litre each on Sunday followed by similar hikes on Monday. Petrol is now sold in Delhi at ₹72.46 per litre and diesel at ₹70.59 a litre, according to the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), India’s largest petroleum refiner and fuel retailer. Prices of auto fuels differ across cities because of variations in state and local levies.
Daily price revisions were suspended and retail rates were frozen on March 16. Executives working for public sector oil marketing companies (OMCS) – IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat
Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) – said on condition of anonymity that this was done under some tacit, but prudent, directive by the government, which raised excise duty on fuel to benefit from the lower prices.
“Due to highly volatile nature of international oil prices, it was not always advisable to allow a complete free-fall of retail rates because, in case of a sudden spike [in global oil prices], which was inevitable, the reverse would have been more burdensome for the consumer,” one executive said. OMCS last revised petrol and diesel prices at ₹69.59 per litre and ₹62.29 a litre, respectively, when the Brent crude was at $30.03 per barrel. International oil prices further dropped to $19.33 a barrel on April 21 amid slack demand due.