India’s oil majors may divest retail outlets

Public sector oil marketing companies – Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) – may have to divest most of their company-owned-company-operated (COCO) petrol pumps to individual applicants from special categories. “A very few selected number of outlets established on national highways or prominent positions developed on spacious land to project brand image of company need to be operated as permanent COCOs. [The] rest of the COCOs need to be distributed among pending letter of intent holders of corpus fund scheme beneficiaries as per their seniority,” a senior petroleum ministry official said. “Permanent COCOs should be used for training of dealers and staff and for other promotional activities,” he added. In 2006, the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas had issued broad guidelines on the operation of COCO outlets and had advised IOC, HPCL and BPCL to frame their own guidelines. As of March, oil companies have a total of 34,222 retail outlets, of which IOC operates 17,642. (August 17, 2008)