The new year has not disturbed the mood of fuel consumers as petrol and diesel prices have not burnt a hole in people’s pockets even though the global oil prices have firmed up.
On Tuesday, the oil marketing companies kept the pump prices of petrol and diesel unchanged, maintaining the trend started in the second week of December.
Accordingly, the pump price of petrol remained at Rs 83.71 a liter and diesel Rs 73.87 a liter in Delhi on Tuesday. Across the country as well the price of the two petroleum products remained unchanged.
The price of petrol in Mumbai remains at Rs 90.34 and diesel Rs 80.51, the two fuels remains at Rs 86.51 and Rs 79.31 a liter respectively in Chennai. The retail price of petrol remains at Rs 85.19 and Rs 77.44 a liter in Kolkata.
OMCs have gone on a pause mode at a time when news of successful coronavirus and expectations of big pick up in demand had kept crude on the boil with prices breaching $50 a barrel mark.
Petrol prices were very close to breaching the all-time high level of Rs 84 a liter (reached on October 4, 2018) when it touched Rs 83.71 a liter on December 7. But the march has been halted ever since then with no price revision by the OMCs.
With Tuesday’s pause, fuel prices have now increased on 15 of the past 46 days with petrol prices rising by Rs 2.65 per liter and diesel by 3.41 a liter.
Earlier, petrol prices had been static since September 22, and diesel rates hadn’t changed since October 2. It started rising in November and again went for a pause since December 8.
Though retail pricing of petrol and diesel has been deregulated and oil marketing companies were following a daily price revision formula, the same was suspend ended for almost two months to prevent volatility in international oil markets from impacting fuel prices regularly during the pandemic.
