It’s the effect of decontrolling of petrol prices.
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), on Tuesday announced to re-open its retail fuel stations across Gujarat.
“With the decontrol of petrol pricing, the RIL fuel retail outlets now retail petrol at price parity with public sector undertakings. The company has already resumed sales of petrol in around 162 petrol pumps including 59 company owned/operated pumps from Tuesday.Earlier we were at a disadvantage as RIL was not covered under the government subsidy. Now, with the deregulation of petrol, there is a level playing field and Reliance Petrol will now be sold at the same price as that of the other oil companies.If the government deregulates diesel, then RIL will make diesel available at market rates.The RIL outlets use latest technology like high-speed multi-product dispensers for quick fuelling, electronic key management system for online monitoring of operations, automatic tank gauging to centrally monitor product inventory and ensure no dry-outs, electronic price display at dispensers. Each of the outlets is connected online, round-the-clock and key data is constantly polled to a central command centre to improve decision-making and operations control,” a company spokesperson said.
Reliance Industries had shut down its 1,432 fuel outlets across the country in March 2008 following increasing losses on sale of auto fuels at competitive prices. However, in the latter half of 2008 when crude oil prices started falling again RIL had restarted some of its operations.
On 25 June, the government had freed price of petrol linking it to market rates, and increased price of diesel by Rs2 per liter, kerosene by Rs3 and cooking gas by Rs35 per 14.2 kg cylinder.