Indian Fuel Distributor Companies To Cover Cost Of Petrol, LPG; Diesel Still At Loss

The fall in the price of crude oil at the international level has put Indian Fuel Distributor Companies in a position to cover the cost of petrol and LPG. But companies are still facing losses on the sale of diesel.

Arun Kumar Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), the country's second largest petroleum company, gave information about this.

He said that in the last four-five months, due to the continuous volatility in the international crude prices, the public sector petroleum companies did not make any changes in the prices of petrol and diesel. He said, 'In a day, prices were fluctuating up to five-seven dollars per barrel. In such a volatile situation, we could not burden the consumers. No distributor can bear the burden of such volatility.'

Apart from BPCL, other public sector petroleum companies Indian Oil and HPCL did not change the retail price of petrol and diesel for about five months. The BPCL chief said, 'In such a situation, we have decided to bear some loss on our own. At that time we also had the hope that we would make up for this loss in the future.'

At one time, petroleum companies were facing a loss of Rs 20-25 per liter on diesel and Rs 14-18 on petrol due to high international crude oil prices. But after the fall in the international prices of crude oil, this loss has also reduced significantly. Singh said, 'From next month there will be no loss on LPG. Similarly, we are not incurring any loss on petrol. But there is still a loss situation on diesel.'

He said that such a situation cannot continue for long. If prices remain high for a long time, we will need compensation in the form of increase in retail prices or subsidy from the government. However, he did not give details of the loss incurred by the public petroleum distributor companies at this time.