The oil marketing companies have increased the petrol and diesel prices by prices 5-6 paise in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata on Tuesday. While the petrol prices have been raised after a hiatus of three days, diesel prices were increased marginally yesterday. In Delhi, while petrol is selling at the price of Rs 73.13, up five paise, diesel prices have surged by five paise to Rs 66.71 per litre today.
In Mumbai, people need to shell out five paise more than yesterday to buy one litre of petrol which is costing Rs 78.70. For diesel, they need to spend Rs 69.83 per litre, higher by six paise than the last rate. In Kolkata, petrol and diesel are selling at Rs 75.15 and Rs 68.45 per litre respectively. Both the petrol and diesel prices have been raised by five paise.
In Chennai, diesel is costing Rs 70.44 a litre, five paise higher than the last price and petrol is costing Rs 75.90 a litre, according to the website of Indian Oil Corporation or IOC.
In the last seven days, this is the third time when the fuel prices have been hiked. The petrol prices have been increased by 5-8 paise per litre, whereas the diesel prices were raised by 5-9 paise per litre across major cities in the last one week.
The oil prices rallied after the world’s largest economy, the US announced its decision of not granting sanction waivers to the Iranian oil importers including India from May 2. The prices fell on Friday after US President Donald Trump urged the OPEC countries to raise the output and reduce the oil prices. Today the Brent crude futures were at $ $71.82 per barrel, 0.31% lower than the previous settlement and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $63.43, down by 0.07 points from the last close.
Since the beginning of 2019, there has been a surge in oil prices by more than thirty per cent and in April, the prices have rallied by around 4% and last week they even crossed $75 per barrel.
“In the next one to two months, the crude oil is expected to remain quite volatile. On the one hand, Trump wants to bring down Iran’s crude oil exports to zero while on the other hand, Trump is asking OPEC to reduce high crude oil prices. Hence there is a lot of uncertainty in the short term. For Brent crude oil, $80 is stiff resistance,” Rushabh Maru, Research Analyst – Currency and Commodity, Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers told Financial Express Online.