India’s petrol pump count crosses 1 lakh, doubles in a decade

India’s petrol pump network has crossed the 1,00,000-mark, doubling since 2015 as State-owned fuel retailers aggressively expanded outlets to defend market share and push fuel access deeper into rural and highway corridors amid a sustained boom in vehicle ownership. At the end of November, the country had 1,00,266 petrol pumps - the third largest after the US and China with a much bigger geographical area, according to data available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Oil Ministry.

Over 90 per cent of the pumps are owned by State-owned firms such as Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL). Russia’s Rosneft-backed Nayara Energy Ltd is the largest private fuel retailer with 6,921 outlets, followed by 2,114 stations owned by a joint venture of Reliance Industries Ltd and BP. Shell has 346 outlets. The petrol pump network has almost doubled from 50,451 stations in 2015, PPAC data showed.

That year, 2,967 outlets owned by private companies made up almost 5.9 per cent. Presently, they account for 9.3 per cent of the total market. Participation by the private sector in the fuel retail outlet business started in FY2004 with 27 pumps. India has the world’s third-largest petrol pump network. The US has the highest. While there is no official data on the number of outlets in the US, a 2024 report put the number of retail gas stations in the country at 1,96,643. Some outlets would have shut down since then.

For China, a report last year put the number at 1,15,228 gas stations. Sinopec on its website says it is China’s largest fuel retailer with more than 30,000 in-service gas stations. Though China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) is larger in size, its number of outlets looks dwarfed in front of 41,664 outlets of the Indian market leader IOC. BPCL has the second-largest network with 24,605 stations, followed by HPCL with 24,418 outlets. Rural outlets account for almost 29 per cent of the total pumps, up from 22 per cent a decade ago.

The outlets have also undergone a change, now selling alternative fuels like CNG and hosting EV charging stations, alongside regular petrol and diesel dispensers. Private participation in Indian fuel retailing has been limited because of the government’s indirect control over pricing, according to industry officials. Even though petrol and diesel pricing had been free a decade back, the government continues to exercise control over it through its majority ownership in the retailing companies.

State-owned fuel retailers stopped daily price revision in line with the cost in November 2021. Even prior to that, there were periods when their pump rates were lower than cost, making retailing by the private sector economically unviable. Also, the crowding of the retail pumps has meant that the per-pump throughput has fallen, pushing some outlets on not-so-busy routes into losses.