Oil’s not well at fuel stations

Stock up on fuel over the weekend as the city may face a shortage of petrol on Monday and Tuesday, with petroleum dealers in the city preparing for a no-purchase protest.

On October 1 and 2, fuel pumps will not replenish their stock of fuel when they run out of it. If this campaign does not draw the attention of the government, the dealers, to reduce cost of operation, will keep the petrol pumps open only foreight hours a day (from 9 am to 5 pm in the city) and 12 hours on highways (from 6 pm to 6 am).The protest, although not the first, hopes to draw the attention of the government to unfulfilled promises made to the dealers. The promises include: implementation of the Apoorva Chandra Committee report, increasing the dealer’s margin to 5% and restricting the proliferation of petrol pumps.

Through a similar protest in April, the dealers had caught the attention of the government. However, government’s promises to look into their demands came to nothing. Currently, the dealer’s margin is less than 2%. BR Ravindranath, president of the Akhila Karnataka Federation of Petroleum Traders and Bangalore Petroleum Dealer’s Association, said: “About 0.75% of the fuel that is brought to the pumps is lost through evaporation. For 1,000 litres of petrol, about six litres evaporates and we have toincur the loss. Apart from this, there is a lot of expenditure involved in operating petrol pumps: salary, PF to employees, water and electricity charges and so on.”

“This is our livelihood and we are unable to manage.”

The Apoorva Chandra Committee was supposed to recommend ways of improving the operation of petrol pumps and make it more sustainable for the petrol pump owners. However, a year after the report was submitted to the government, no concrete action has been taken on it, allege petrol pump owners.

“Owning and operating a petrol pump is not profitable anymore. Although there is a lot of investment required, the returns are marginal,” said Bharat Mudappa, owner of a pump at Trinity Circle. Manager of another petrol pump, in Koramangala, said the only way to operate petrol pumps was by reducing the expenditure as much as possible. “It is almost impossibleto run a petrol pump nowadays and if we want to survive, we have to be extremely careful about the costs involved.”