New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a cut of Rs 100 on cooking gas cylinders, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said that fuel price cuts may be considered if crude oil prices remain under control. “If crude oil prices will be under control, then something can be looked at,” said Puri, adding that Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are still making some under-recovery on diesel and these decisions come under their purview.
A series of price cuts have been announced in the gas segment for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) over the past few days, leading to speculation about price cuts on diesel and petrol. On March 8, the government announced Rs 100 cut on domestic LPG cylinders. On March 7, the government extended the previously announced subsidy of Rs 300 for Ujjwala beneficiaries for FY25, while gas marketing companies reduced CNG prices by Rs 2.50/kg.
A senior Petroleum Ministry official, however, hinted that OMCs are still making under-recoveries in the range of Rs 3-5/litre on diesel. On being asked if back of the envelope calculations support a price cut, the official said that such calculations also did not support holding retail prices of petrol and diesel in India at Rs 96.72/litre and Rs 89.62/litre at the time global crude oil market breached the USD-100/barrel mark in 2022.
Commenting on the decision of OPEC+ nations to further extend production cuts of 2.2 million barrels per day until the second quarter of the year, Puri said that despite production cuts, the global crude oil prices have not increased. “This means that the global crude oil market is absorbing it,” said the minister.
Referring to India’s decision to source oil from Russia in the midst of geopolitical uncertainties, Puri said, “We will buy oil from wherever we can and we have a totally transparent system for making these purchases. Our philosophy is ‘nation first and the consumer is paramount.’”
“We have increased LPG prices by just 70 percent when Saudi CP rose by more than 300 percent,” Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep S Puri said, adding that India is a country that has been able to manage the cooking gas market in a very transparent and open manner.
“From September 2021 to September 2023, the price (of the cylinders) came down by 4.56 percent in Delhi. There was no issue related to the availability of cylinders anywhere. When the flood came in North East, our workers personally delivered the cylinders in these cases of torrential rain,” said the minister.
