After implementing one of the steepest hike in petrol, diesel and LPG prices in the first week of November, oil firms today decided to reduce the price of petrol by Rs 1.16 per litre. The revised prices will be effective from midnight.The reduction in the price of petrol is mainly due to the sharp fall in the prices of international crude. Crude oil prices fell today to an 8-week low of under $47 a barrel. While US light crude ruled around $46.59 a barrel — the lowest price since September 22 and 16 per cent below a record high of $55.67 on October 25 — London Brent fell to around $41 a barrel. A rebound in crude stocks in the US has brought oil prices down from their peaks. Supplies have risen 22 million barrels in the past seven weeks, partly due to the highest OPEC production in decades. According to the oil marketing firms, since petrol was increased to import parity price on November 4, the price is now being brought down after a fall in the import parity price thanks to lower crude oil prices and product prices. In the case of diesel, however, though import parity price has come down compared to November 4, the present diesel price is still short of import parity by around Rs 1.24 per litre. On November 4, the government had announced a Rs 2.12 per litre increase in diesel prices — half of the amount required to reach import parity price. On the LPG front, oil firms have not revised prices. On November 4, price of LPG was hiked by Rs 20 per cylinder and it was also decided that prices of the LPG cylinder will go up by Rs 5 per month till import parity price is reached. In the first week of November, there was an under recovery on LPG to the tune of Rs 158 per cylinder.
