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The domestic demand for petroleum products is now steadily nearing pre-lockdown levels.
“The sales of petroleum products in India, the world’s third-biggest oil consuming nation, had fallen to the lowest since 2007 due to the nationwide lockdown necessitated to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic,” an official statement said.
Overall, the consumption of all petroleum products has significantly increased from the April 2020 level of 49 per cent (6.6 million tonnes in April 2020 against 13.4 million tonnes in April 2019) to 88 per cent level in June 2020 (11.8 million tonnes in June 2020 against 13.4 million tonnes in June 2019), the statement said.
This comes against the backdrop of the Indian economy gradually getting back in momentum with the easing of lockdown restrictions and revival of economic activities, the statement added.
The demand of industrial fuels such as sulphur, petcoke and naphtha has reached levels of 89.3 per cent, 118 per cent and 120.2 per cent, respectively. The demand for marine fuels has reached a level of 138.5 per cent compared with the corresponding period last year.
The crude oil throughput of oil marketing companies’ (OMCs) refineries has already crossed 85 per cent as on date, from as low as of 55 per cent in the beginning of April 2020.
On an industry basis, in June 2020, petrol consumption reached 85 per cent of last year’s level (2 million tonnes in June 2020 compared with 2.4 million tonnes in June 2019) and diesel reached 82 per cent (5.5 million tonnes in June 2020 against 6.7 million tonnes in June 2019). The demand for LPG fuel continues to rise, with a robust growth of 16.6 per cent in June 2020 over June 2019.
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