Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Sept.30: Oil marketing companies have one again increased the prices of petrol and diesel on Thursday. This time there has been an increase of 25 paise in petrol and 31 paise in diesel. There was no change in their prices on Wednesday. With today’s increase, the price of petrol in Delhi has now gone up to Rs 101.64 while the price of diesel has gone up to Rs 89.87 per liter. The new prices have come into effect from 6 am. The daily review and change of prices is based on the average price of the benchmark fuel in the international market and foreign exchange rates over the past 15 days.
In Mumbai, 1 liter of petrol is being sold at Rs 107.71 per liter while the price of diesel is Rs 97.52 per liter. Benchmark crude oil prices have now settled at $78 a barrel after shooting a 3-year high of $80 a barrel earlier this week. Petrol prices had remained stable since September 5, but oil companies raised their pump prices on Tuesday in view of the recent rise in product prices.
Oil marketing companies in India preferred to keep an eye on the global oil situation before making any changes in the prices. This is the reason why petrol prices have not changed for the last three weeks. But the extreme volatility in the global oil price has now forced OMCs to impact the growth.
The OMC’s wait-and-watch plan had earlier come as a relief for consumers as there was no change in the price of crude oil during the period when US production and inventory shortages and demand peaked. This requires an increase of about Re. 1 in the price of petrol and diesel.
Fuel price in the country is hitting record highs due to 41 increases in its retail rates since April this year. It dropped on a few occasions but remained largely stable. Petrol and diesel prices in the international market have been around $6-7 per barrel higher than the average prices during August.
