Essar Oil, India's second largest private oil firm, plans to more than triple its petrol pumps to 5,000 by the end of next year, Chairman Prashant Ruia said. Essar currently has 1,550 petrol pumps, the highest owned by any private company, and another 1,600 are in various stages of implementation.
“Going forward, our expanding retail network will be a great value creator. Our network is expected to reach 5,000 operational outlets by the end of next year,” he said in the company's annual report. The gradual increase of Rs0.50 per litre per month in diesel prices initiated by the previous UPA Government in January 2013 and reduction in crude oil prices during the NDA regime in 2014-15 led to full de-regulation of diesel prices. “These factors enabled (Essar Oil) to enter the market, hitherto unavailable to private players due to the subsidy regime,” he said.
Essar Oil ltd and Reliance Industries ltd, the only other private refiner in India, had together captured about 17 per cent of domestic retail market for diesel and 10 per cent of petrol by 2006 before heavily subsidised sales by state-run firms drove them out of business. While RIl had shut down all of its 1,432 petrol pumps around March 2008, Essar continued to operate its near equal number of outputs on limited scale, mostly selling petrol. Petrol price was deregulated or linked to market price in June 2010.