Fuel prices rise hold for 2nd consecutive day

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SME Times News Bureau | 25 Jan, 2021
Petrol and diesel prices remain unchanged on Monday after reaching new all-time high levels as oil marketing companies decided to take a pause, and wait and watch the situation before taking a call on further revision of auto fuel prices to bridge the widening under recovery.

Accordingly, the pump price of petrol remained at Rs 85.70 a litre in Delhi while diesel prices in the capital was unchanged at Rs 75.88 a litre.

Across the country as well the fuel prices maintained the same price line. So, petrol is priced at Rs 92.28 a litre in Mumbai, Rs 88.29 a litre in Chennai and Rs 87.11 a litre in Kolkata.

Diesel on the other hand continues to be priced at Rs 82.66 a litre in Mumbai, Rs 81.14 a litre in Chennai and Rs 79.48 a litre in Kolkata.

The decision of holding the fuel prices came on a day when global crude prices showed some signs of softening declining by less than one per cent to close to $ 55 a barrel. Crude prices have remained firm for the last few weeks in the wake of unilateral production cuts announced by Saudi Arabia and a pick up in consumption in all major economies globally.

The petrol and diesel prices have increased eight times in January with the two auto fuels increasing by Rs 1.99 and Rs 2.01 per litre respectively this month.

The last few increases in the pump prices in petrol and diesel has taken its price to record levels across the country in all major metro cities and other towns. The last time the retail price of auto fuels were closer to current levels was on October 4, 2018 when crude prices had shot up up $ 80 a barrel.

The current price rise is largely on account of steep increase in Central taxes of petrol and diesel and firm crude prices.

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.

Oil companies executives said that petrol and diesel prices may increase further in the coming days as retail prices may have to be balanced in line with the global developments to prevent OMCs from making losses on sale of auto fuels.