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Thursday, Jun 26, 2008
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Petrol pumps threaten to stop sale of branded petrol

Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI: The Federation of All-India Petroleum Traders Association on Wednesday threatened to stop the sale of branded petrol and diesel from next month if oil companies did not stop forcing them to sell more of the expensive fuel.

The threat was issued after a meeting of the representatives of the federation with Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora and representatives of the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs). Honorary general secretary of the federation Ajay Bansal said it had issued a 10-day ultimatum to the government to sort out the issue or face direction action from the thousands of petrol pump owners across the country. “The OMCs are asking petrol pump owners to sell at least 50 per cent of the branded fuel. We cannot afford to do this as it has badly affected our customer base and relationship with them,” Mr. Bansal added.

Mr. Bansal said the petrol pump owners could not pressure customers to buy branded fuel which cost Rs. 3-5 a litre more than the regular fuel. IOC, BPCL and HPCL were supplying 300 kilo litres of branded and the same quantity of regular fuel. And towards the end of the month, petrol pumps run out of normal fuel because of the forced quota system.

Interestingly, the OMC heads said they were not willing to increase the normal fuel supply as they were incurring heavy losses. However, Mr. Deora assured the dealers that he would call a meeting of the companies by next week and a solution to the problem would be found within 2-3 weeks.

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