"Petrol, Diesel Soars Sky; Reaches Highest On Friday".
On Friday, the major metro cities saw a sharp rise of 22-25 paisa per litre on petrol and 23-27 paisa per litre on diesel. The new all-time high levels in oil prices are to break the pause in the revision of auto fuel prices by the oil marketing companies.
Accordingly, petrol is now priced at INR 85.45 per litre in Delhi as opposed to INR 85.20 per litre, previously. Mumbai petrol prices have increased to INR 92.04 per litre as opposed to INR 91.80 per litre previously. In other metros like Chennai and Kolkata, petrol is priced at INR 88.07 and INR 86.87 per litre respectively. The increase has been of 22 and 24 paise per litre respectively.
On the other hand, Diesel faces a sharper increase, raised by 27 paise per litre. Diesel is now priced at INR 82.40 per litre from INR 82.14 per litre, as noted on Friday. In Delhi, diesel notes a spike of 25 paise per litre, now amounting to INR 75.63 per litre. In Chennai, sees a spike of 23 paisa litre amounting to INR 80.90 per litre. In Kolkata views a spike of 26 paise per litre amounting to INR 79.23 a litre.
In the wake of unilateral production cuts announced by Saudi Arabia, the global crude prices showed some signs of softening declining by less than one per cent to close to $55 a barrel. In this light, the increase in retail prices of auto fuel is seeing a sudden rise every week.
This is the third revision in the auto fuel prices this week. Even before the OMCs decided to provide relief to its consumers from frequent price rise, the prices have risen sharply by 25 paise per litre each on Monday and Tuesday.
In January of 2021, the pump price of petrol and diesel has now increased by INR 1.74 and INR 1.76 per litres respectively, including Friday’s revision.
The OMCs decided to break an earlier longer period of pause increasing the retail prices for the first time this year on January 6. The price had been raised on six different days since then.
The large steep in the amount of increase in petrol and diesel prices are due to central taxes on petrol and diesel and firm crude prices.
The executive of oil companies suggested an increase in the prices of petrol and diesel furthermore in the coming days as retail prices may have to come in balance with the global developments to prevent OMCs from making losses on the sale of auto fuels.
This sudden surge in prices hasn’t been witnessed in the country since October 4, 2018, when crude prices had shot up to $80 a barrel. These increases in pump prices have reached record levels across all the major metro cities of the country.
Petrol price was very close to breaching the all-time high level of Rs 84 a litre (reached on October 4, 2018) when it touched Rs 83.71 a litre on December 7, 2020. But the march had been halted ever since then with no price revision by the OMCs in the month. The price rise started again only on January 6.
Read more...