Essar Oil restarts 350 retail outlets; plans a comeback by December

17 October 2008

Mumbai: Private sector refiner Essar Oil has restarted about 350 of its 1,250 fuel stations in the country as the price of crude oil has started declining. Essar Oil plans to restart up to 70 per cent of its fuel outlets by end-December, a company spokesman said.

Essar, which started reviving its closed fuel station in August, hopes to restart up to 70 per cent of its retail outlets by December.

Essar Oil and its larger rival Reliance Industries were forced to close down their fuel outlets following competition from subsidised fuel from state-run fuel distributors.

Both Essar and Reliance were selling petrol and diesel at rates substantially above the rates charged by public sector oil companies.

Essar was selling petrol at Rs2-5 a litre above the PSU rates and diesel at Rs6-10 per litre higher.

Essar, which runs a 10.5 million tonne a year refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat, had shut almost all of its retail outlets starting April 2007.