With rupee falling to new lows, losses on diesel and cooking fuel have widened to their highest levels this year, upsetting the government's subsidy maths.
Revenue from divestment has fetched Rs 40,000-50,000 crore against target of Rs 2.10 trillion.
Oil companies choose to skip the revision this time.
According to estimates, if the companies are not allowed to raise petrol rates at least Rs 5 a litre by the first fortnight of September, they might begin to suffer underrecoveries on this decontrolled auto fuel, too -- for the first time this financial year.
The new prices will be effective from Friday midnight.
Chinese stock markets suffered their biggest single-day drop since the global financial crisis.
The price of the Indian basket of crude oil jumped as much as 78 per cent to cross $50 a barrel last week, from a multi-year low of $28 in January.
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The 30 Sensex companies alone, which are among the biggest companies in the country, now account for nearly 50% or about Rs 47 lakh crore of total investor wealth.
Fuel retailers sell diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene at government controlled rates which are below market price. The loss they thus incur is made good through cash subsidy from the government and dole from upstream firms like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.
#GiveItUp but no matching LPG connections for BPL
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the group's biggest cash generator, overtook Vedanta to become the highest dividend payer in India in FY23. The IT services major paid Rs 42,090 crore for FY23, up 167.4 per cent from Rs 15,738 crore for FY22. The 10 biggest payers together shelled out Rs 2.06 trillion for FY23, more than double the Rs 98,371 crore for FY22.
IOC is building a 5 million tonnes per annum LNG terminal at Ennore near Chennai which is to be completed by 2017.
Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation are losing Rs 486 crore (Rs 4.86 billion) per day as they are made to sell diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene way below cost to keep inflation under check.
The battered rupee gained 225 paise to 66.55 against the dollar today, the most in at least 15 years, after the Reserve Bank of India eased pressure in the currency market by starting a facility for state-run oil refiners to buy foreign exchange.
With the rupee continuing to remain weak against the US dollar, losses on diesel have climbed to Rs 9.45 per litre, upsetting the government's subsidy maths.
In 16 days, petrol price has been hiked by Rs 8.3 per litre and diesel by Rs 9.46 - a record increase in rates of the fuel in any fortnight since pricing was deregulated in April 2002.
A pilot for daily revision of petrol and diesel price will be first implemented in Puducherry and Vizag in Andhra Pradesh, Udaipur in Rajasthan, Jamshedpur in Jharkhand and Chandigarh
Petrol gets expensive but diesel is cheaper by Rs 1.35/ per litre.
The price of diesel sold to bulk users has been hiked by about Rs 25 per litre in line with a near 40 per cent rise in international oil prices, but retail rates at petrol pumps remain unchanged, sources said. Petrol pump sales have jumped by a fifth this month after bulk users like bus fleet operators and malls queued up at petrol bunks to buy fuel rather than the usual practice of ordering directly from oil companies, widening the losses of retailers. Worst hit are private retailers like Nayara Energy, Jio-bp and Shell, who have so far refused to curtail any volume despite a surge in sales.
In the broader market, BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap indices mirrored the gains in headline indices and rose 1% and 0.9% respectively.
Sena also said that laying a brick for the $44 billion (Rs 3 lakh crore) mega refinery project at Nanar in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra would be akin to laying the foundation stone for a cancer hospital there.
Govt diverts Rs 253-crore subsidy savings to the poor.
The permission right now is for delivery only for stationary usage. This limits the service to those who operate units like diesel generation sets.
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Investment can only be by prospective dealers.
Not surprisingly, equity investors are bidding-up stock prices across sectors and the broader market is now more valuable than pre-Covid levels.
The S&P BSE Sensex closed 318 points at 24,455 and the Nifty50 shed 99 points to end at 7,438.
Indian companies place orders worth $600 million for US crude, which is likely to increase by nearly $2 billion in the near future.
The government on Thursday sanctioned Rs 17,772 crore (Rs 177.72 billion) cash subsidy to fuel retailers like IOC to cover for half of the revenues they lost on selling diesel and cooking fuels below cost in the September quarter.
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The Oil Ministry on October 31 issued orders asking upstream oil and gas producers like ONGC and Oil India Ltd to give Rs 16,729.74 crore (Rs 167.29 billion) to make up for 47 per cent of the Rs 35,328-crore (Rs 353.28 billion) revenue that retailers lost on selling diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene at government controlled rates in second quarter.
Oil companies on Wednesday slashed petrol and diesel prices by Rs 2, with effect from midnight tonight.
Despite a massive decline in crude oil prices since 2012 -- Modi has been prime minister in six of these eight years -- petrol in Delhi has become 10 per cent costlier and diesel 97 per cent, as of July 2.
'The actual price of petrol is Rs 35 and it jumps to Rs 88 because of government taxes.'
Many users did not know that their entitlement was not coming to their regular bank account but going to an account which they had not applied for.
The report, 'Road Ahead Clears Up for Oil PSUs', says the decline in underrecoveries, or losses oil-marketing companies incur on selling petroleum products below market price, will have a significant positive impact on both upstream and downstream public-sector oil companies.
'There exists a 'brotherhood' of sorts for a very long time and corrupt dealers and corrupt OMC officials are in it together,' Ashwani Attrish, founder, Empowering Petroleum Dealers Foundation, tells Sudhir Bisht, a veteran of the petroleum industry.
Following up on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's Budget announcement of creating an integrated oil company, India's biggest oil and gas producer ONGC may buy all of the government's 51.11 per cent stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.
Jet fuel (ATF) price was on Monday hiked by a steep 56.5 per cent and that of non-subsidised cooking gas LPG by Rs 11.5 per cylinder on the back of firming up of international oil rates, but petrol and diesel prices continued to remain on freeze for a record 78th day. Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price was hiked by Rs 12,126.75 per kilolitre (kl), or 56.5 per cent, to Rs 33,575.37 per kl in the national capital, according to a price notification by State-owned oil marketing companies.
For BCPL's branded petrol, Speed, the price differential with regular petrol is now between Rs 2.74 and Rs 3.75 per litre.
In Maharashtra, the oil industry had tenancy protection till 1999.
In a tweet, Modi said India is 'delighted to welcome' the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
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