Competition intensifies in fuel retailing

India’s two private fuel retailers, the Ruias-owned Essar Oil and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), are both expanding the roll-out of their outlets, after a long period of rollback and dormancy. RIL re-opened 400+ outlets from around 70 a few months earlier. The company once had around 1,450 fuel retail outlets and then shut almost all of them as global crude oil prices rose. Without the benefit of government subsidies, the two privately owned companies could not compete with the state-owned oil marketing companies which sold critical petroleum products at subsidized prices. Essar Oil is selling around 110,000 kiloliters (kl) a month, while RIL is selling around 15,000 kl. (October 19, 2009)