Reliance to close petrol pumps by April-end

Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector oil firm, plans to shut down all its 1,400 petrol pumps by April-end as it is unable to match the fuel price offered by state-run retailers, who get compensated by the Government for selling fuel below the cost.

Reliance has sent internal mails to its petrol pump operators about the phased closure, industry sources said. The company plans not to replenish petrol and diesel stocks once the existing lot at its retail outlets gets exhausted.

The owner of nation's largest refinery suffered huge losses despite selling petrol and diesel at prices higher than the state-run retailers Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum.

On an average, petrol from Reliance outlets costed between Rs 4 and 5 a litre more than the PSU pumps. Reliance still lost Rs 3.4 a litre on petrol and Rs 5.8 per litre on diesel and had seen its market share fall from 14.3 per cent to less than a per c ent in diesel.

Public sector retailers too lose Rs 9.68 on sale of every litre of petrol and Rs 12.21 per litre on diesel but the losses are made up by issue of oil bonds by the Government and discounts from ONGC, GAIL and Oil India.

The same compensation is not given to the private retailers such as Reliance and Essar. Reliance spokesperson was not immediately available for comments. The company, sources said, had invested about Rs 4,000 crore in setting up close to 1,400 retail o utlets for selling petrol and diesel in the country.

Out of these, Reliance owns and operates about 450 outlets. Besides, transporters had invested over Rs 524 crore in a transport fleet of nearly 3,745 trucks, who after the closure would idle.

Over 55,000 jobs, which had been created by Reliance retail operations at outlets, transporters and within the company are now at risk. Sources said the shift of huge volumes from Reliance outlets to PSU outlets would increase the burden of support on t he Government to the tune of nearly Rs 4,000 crore. - PTI