The Petroleum Ministry is mulling a proposal to allow online booking of petrol and diesel and which would be home delivered by oil marketing companies.
If the tweets of the Petroleum Ministry and the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan are to go by, the government is considering a proposal to enable online ordering of fuel and which would be home delivered by oil marketing companies "to avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations."
Here's what the Petroleum Ministry tweeted on Friday:
While this may sound like an idea whose time has come - given the increasing popularity and adoption of e-commerce in the country - there are several reasons why it could go wrong.
According to certain sources quoted by Business Standard, pre-booking of fuel online will help increase the number of digital transactions for buying petrol and diesel, something that is being propagated by the government since demonetization. One of the first incentives announced by the Centre was a 0.75% cashback on paying for fuel by card at petrol pumps and to do away with charges on card payments which were borne by the consumers.
The idea, allegedly proposed by Pradhan, is in response to petrol and diesel dealers, mostly in South India, who have decided to keep their fuel pumps shut on Sundays. The funny thing is that these fuel dealers say their decision was in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal to the general public to cut fuel consumption.
Why pre-booking and home delivery of fuel could go wrong:
1) The Petroleum Ministry has stringent rules on loading and unloading, refuelling, and transportation of fuel. The regulations start from who is allowed to transport the fuel, to how, to whom, using what, and how much. Then there are regulations on building the tanker with certain specifications, cleaning and storing it, when you can refuel it, refilling, which kind of fuel to fill, protocol when the type of fuel is changing, and so on and so forth.
2) Even if all the above criteria are met, in a country where traffic laws are non-existent for most drivers, an accident of/ with the fuel tanker within the city limits could have catastrophic consequences.
3) Exposure of fuel to the air creates fumes which are highly combustible. If the quality of the fuel is compromised, it can create problems with the vehicle's carburetor and engine, which are not easy or inexpensive to repair.
4) Considering the possibility that fuel is supplied in tin or aluminium containers, if there's a spill in the house, there can be grave danger. It's also dangerous to keep petrol or diesel at home with kids around. For the same reason, there is also a ban on the sale of petrol in plastic bottles since 2010, a practice which was widespread earlier across cities.
5) Fuel can be misused by miscreants in rioting, to make petrol bombs, during domestic violence.
6) There is a serious possibility of theft of fuel, and/ or replacing it with sub-standard quality of petrol and diesel.
There are several start-ups in the US that deliver fuel to homes and refill your car's tanker at home - these include WeFuel, Filld, Yoshi, Booster Fuel, Purple, and so on. However, according to a Bloomberg report, on the US-based fuel refill start-ups, a spokesperson of the San Francisco fire department had said in May 2016, "It is not permitted." He also asked the residents of San Francisco to notify the fire department if they saw any such companies.
The Oil Ministry and the government are mulling the possibility of delivering fuel at your doorstep, but this will require careful consideration of everything that could go wrong than just considering how it would convenience the public.
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