State-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) continue to lose Rs 1.37 when they sell a litre of petrol, Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. He, however, did not say if oil companies will raise price of petrol.
According to Reddy, despite crude oil price being at the lower band during better part of 2012-13 in comparison with last financial year, a sharp fall in the value of rupee negated the effect making crude imports costlier by 7%.
The basket of crude India buys has averaged $105.22 per barrel this fiscal, down 6% from $111.89 per barrel in 2011-12. But the rupee has depreciated to Rs 54.64 a dollar as compared to Rs 47.95 last year. This has resulted in actual cost of crude oil purchase going up by 7% to Rs 5,749 a barrel in 2012-13 from Rs 5,365 last fiscal.
This fiscal, till now oil firms have revised prices only on four occasions — raising it by a steep Rs 7.54 a litre from May 24 before cutting them by Rs 2.02 per litre from June 3 and by Rs 2.46 a litre from June 29. They last raised petrol price by Rs 0.70 a litre from July 24. Besides petrol, OMCs are losing Rs 12.06 per litre on diesel, Rs 28.54 a litre on kerosene and Rs 231 per LPG cylinder. They lost Rs 47,811 crore on sale of the three controlled products during the April-June quarter. This was on top of Rs 1,38.541 crore of revenue loss in 2011-12.