West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday asked all political parties, including those supporting the United Progressive Alliance government from outside, to build pressure for roll back of hike in price of non-subsidised cooking gas.
At present, around 12 per cent of around 190 million rural households today use LPG to meet their cooking energy needs.
In a discussion in Lok Sabha on the COVID pandemic, members called for ban on international flights in view of the outbreak of the Omicron strain and demanded that the government 'accept responsibility' for deaths of lakhs of people during the outbreak.
Some 500,000 drivers and helpers have been left high and dry because of lockdown; many of these trucks are carrying essential goods.
Safety instructions were neglected as LPG cylinders were brought by the organisers and kept under the stage of the Make in India event where a massive fire broke likely due to an electric spark coming into contact with combustible material, a probe into the incident in Mumbai has said.
As the world's third-largest oil importer and consumer, India is running out of options as the relentless surge in international oil prices make it imperative to pass them on to consumers, officials said on Monday. India imports 85 per cent of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. While the imported crude oil is turned into fuels such as petrol and diesel, gas is used as CNG in automobiles and fuel in factories.
Graphic on what the prices of petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene will be in the four metros.
In a move that will give cooking gas consumers more choice, state oil marketing companies have started selling mini 5-kg LPG cylinders at subsidised rates.
Defence outlay alone will jump 22 per cent
'Let Modi not be in the news, I will stop making cartoons on him.'
The Union government has collected Rs 94,181 crore through levy of excise duty on petrol and diesel in the first three months of the current fiscal on the back of a record tax on fuel that yielded 88 per cent higher revenue the previous financial year, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday. Excise duty on petrol was hiked from Rs 19.98 per litre to Rs 32.9 last year to recoup gain arising from international oil prices plunging to multi-year low as pandemic gulped demand. The same on diesel was raised to Rs 31.8 from Rs 15.83 a litre, according to a written reply by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameswar Teli in the Lok Sabha. This led to excise collections on petrol and diesel jumping to Rs 3.35 lakh crore in 2020-21 (April 2020 to March 2021), from Rs 1.78 lakh crore a year back, he said.
The staggered increase in kerosene rate may not have the same impact of freeing up the fuel price as for diesel.
Why does the world's fastest-growing major consumer of energy fail to attract investments in oil and gas? This is a question worth pondering after private sector conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) failed to close a $15-billion downstream asset deal with Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco. It's understandable if multi-billion dollar investments in oil and gas projects or deals involving state companies that need to traverse a complex bureaucracy at state and federal levels and the corridors of ministries unravel. However, Mukesh Ambani-run RIL, India's most successful energy company, is not typically known to fumble on closing deals (Ambani closed deals worth around Rs 2 trillion early last year in telecom and retail with blue chip investors).
Although the future of Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is uncertain for now, the upcoming vote-on-account is likely to account for about Rs 1,300 crore that was transferred to the bank accounts of customers in the form of subsidy.
The government is considering a 3-rupee to 5-rupee hike in the price of diesel, which accounts for more than 40 percent of fuel use, government officials said last week, as the country looks to cut import costs by nearly $20 billion to trim a record current account deficit.
The Opposition alleged that without any provocation from the Opposition, "outsiders who were not part of Parliament security were brought in to manhandle the Opposition leaders and members, including women Parliamentarians who were only protesting against the Government's conduct, highhandedness and muzzling of the voice".
The miscreants behind these hoax threats, which even prompted evacuations in hospitals and shopping malls, are yet to be identified. FIRs have been lodged in connection with some of the incidents, according to officials.
To young professionals I would say, work hard, play hard and not be constrained by fads like WLB, says Sudhir Bisht.
Sitharaman said that the government keeps 'Antodaya' (development of all) at the centre of all its programmes.
Claiming that Shah is getting "frustrated" by "poor turnout" at his rallies, Banerjee also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party is plotting conspiracies to kill her as her security director Vivek Sahay was removed by the Election Commission after she sustained injuries last week in Purba Medinipur's Nandigram.
Bike insurance? Car insurance? Health insurance? Roopam Asthana answers them all.
In the domestic segment, demand is currently led by rural markets, oil and gas, LPG and B2C segments like roofing and sheeting.
"The Corporation has decided to offer a voluntary retirement scheme, with a view to enable employees who are not in a position to continue in service of the Corporation due to various personal reasons, to request for grant of voluntary retirement from the services of the Corporation," Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) said in an internal notice to its employees.
The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has granted seven authorisations to companies for selling automobile (auto) fuels in the country. These new approvals are under the relaxed guidelines for authorisation to market transportation fuels that were revised in 2019. This is expected to make the competition more intense in India's petroleum retail business. According to a top oil ministry official, a fresh marketing authorisation has been granted to Reliance Industries (RIL) under these norms. This is being done since RIL's existing retail marketing authorisation has been transferred to its subsidiary Reliance BP Mobility
Rebuffing petroleum ministry, Siddaramaiah launches Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana-like scheme months before state polls
While the likelihood of these states going the Lanka or Greece way may be an alarming assessment, the financial situation of some states such as Punjab and West Bengal is indeed quite weak.
The sale is key to meeting the government's disinvestment target of Rs 2.1 trillion in the financial year 2020-21. So far, the disinvestment exercise has fetched the government Rs 34,845 crore during the current financial year.
The retail selling price of petrol at Delhi would come down by Rs 1.82 a litre.
Around 15 years ago, when Reliance Industries (RIL) struck natural gas in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin off the east coast, the government made plans to supply that fuel cheaply to scores of generators that sprang up in India triggered by the discovery. Most of the plants, which account for 6 per cent of India's total generation capacity, operate sparsely after the KG-D6 area first failed to meet production targets, and then finally shut shop. Affordable domestic gas was why those thermal plants came up and the rate of the fuel today is why those generators hardly operate. Record liquefied natural gas (LNG) rates may yet again unravel India's ambitions to expand use of gas in industries, households and vehicles. Rates, while volatile, may stay strong this decade as developed nations with higher purchasing power embrace gas as the transition fuel.
Petrol and diesel prices were hiked for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday by 35 paise per litre, pushing the total increase in rates on petrol to Rs 36 per litre and on diesel to Rs 26.58 since early May 2020 when taxes on the two fuels were raised to record levels. Petrol in Delhi now costs Rs 107.24 a litre and diesel comes for Rs 95.97, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. The latest increase that follows the unrelenting hike in international oil prices has pushed pump rates across the country to their highest-ever levels.
Iran has sought a 20 per cent increase in price for the additional 2.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas that India wants to buy, over and above the five million tonnes contracted earlier this week.
The government does not seem inclined, at least in the petroleum sector, to effect sudden and steep upward price revisions to tame its huge subsidy burden and rein in fiscal deficit.
The government appointed panel will look at the difficulties consumers faced in receiving the subsidy after buying gas cylinders at market rates.
The blaze erupted around 7 am in the gas processing plant of the ONGC located in Uran area of neighbouring Navi Mumbai, an official said.
The demand for black oils and specialty products like fuel oil, bitumen, petcoke and sulphur has also shown marked improvement, facilitating increase of refineries throughput.
'You just make the bureaucracy honest and make them function with integrity.' 'Everything will be taken care of after that.' 'But this Mission Karmayogi does not even mention these two words -- honesty and integrity.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party lined up several promises, including a legislation to protect traditions of the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala and a law against "love jihad", while assuring employment for at least one person from each family and free laptops to high school students, in its manifesto for the assembly polls unveiled in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday.
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