Petrol pump automation likely to miss third deadline

Indian Oil has identified 1,750 petrol pumps that are selling more than 200 kilolitres a month. The company has automated around 1,000 such stations. Company officials said they were working on the automation of another 550 such fuel stations. The process, they said, is likely to be completed by December this year.

Hindustan Petroleum has 1,200 such petrol pumps. The company has already automated 800 stations and plans to wind up the process by June 30 this year. Bharat Petroleum has around 1,600 such stations and has already covered 1,304 of them. The company claims it will be able to meet the March 31 deadline.

The government was of the opinion that the maintenance of an inventory record through e-mode would make it easy for officials of oil companies to detect adulteration. To start with, the government asked OMCs to automate all petrol pumps selling more than 200 kilolitres of fuel.

While Indian Oil has 17,000 petrol-dispensing stations across the country, both Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum have 8,000 stations each. The stations selling more than 200 kilolitres of fuel make up just about 20 per cent of all the petrol pumps of the three OMCs.

The government had wanted the automation process to be completed by March 31, 2007. However, the OMCs could not meet the deadline. The government had then asked the OMCs to complete the process by December 31 of that year. After the companies failed to meet the deadline a second time, the government extended the deadline to March 31, 2008.