Oil marketing companies on Friday continued with their wait and watch strategy and kept the retail price of petrol and diesel unchanged for the third consecutive day.
Accordingly, petrol continues to be sold at Rs 90.93 a liter and diesel at Rs 81.32 a liter in the national capital.
Elsewhere in the country as well, fuel prices remained unchanged after oil companies increased the pump price on 13 of the last 18 days.
In the 13 increases since February 9, prices have gone up by Rs 3.98 per liter for petrol while the diesel rate has risen by Rs 4.19 a liter in Delhi.
The price pause on Friday may be momentary as global oil prices are on the boil with benchmark Brent crude prices remaining above $ 66 a barrel. The product prices in the international market have also firmed up over restricted supplies and demand pick up.
The increase in fuel prices in the previous weeks has taken petrol to cross historic high levels of Rs 100 a liter in several cities across the country.
In Mumbai, the petrol price is just Rs 3 per liter short (Rs 97.34 a liter) of touching a three-digit mark of Rs 100 per liter for the very first time ever. Diesel price in the city is closing on Rs 90 a liter (Rs 88.44 a liter).
In all other metros, petrol is over Rs 90 a liter-mark while diesel is well over Rs 80 a liter. Premium petrol has crossed Rs 100 per liter-mark in several cities of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra a few days back.
Since fuel prices are benchmarked to a 15-day rolling average of global refined products’ prices and dollar exchange rate, pump prices can be expected to remain northbound over the next few days even if crude price stabilizes.
The petrol and diesel prices have increased 25 times in 2021 with the two auto fuels increasing by Rs 7.22 and Rs 7.45 per liter respectively so far this year.
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 global developments to prevent OMCs from making losses on the sale of auto fuels.
