Shell reopens 77th petrol pump in India

Buoyed by diesel price deregulation, Royal Dutch/Shell has reopened its 77th petrol pump across the country and is looking to expand the network in near future.Shell said it has reopened a petrol pump in the Rakhial area of Ahmedabad city, taking its total operational fuel stations in India to 77. Of these, 20 pumps are in Gujarat as per PTI.

"With the opening of Rakhial, Shell now has 10 fuel stations in Ahmedabad," the company said in a statement. "Shell is currently present across the six key states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Assam," it added.

The government had in October last year deregulated diesel pricing by stopping subsidies to state-owned fuel retailers. This puts PSU retailers, who operate over 94 per cent of the 53,419 petrol pumps in the country, at par with private companies.

Private retailers like Shell and Reliance Industries had few years back shut down their petrol pumps as they could not match the subsidised price offered by PSUs.  Of the 53,419 petrol pumps in the country, 50,447 are with Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp (BPCL). RIL has reopened 1,400 outlets while Essar Oil has 1,491 petrol pumps on ground.

Commenting on the launch, Ravi Sundararajan, General Manager, Shell Retail India said, "The regulatory environment is getting increasingly conducive for fuel retail business in India, especially after the diesel deregulation that took place last year. We are delighted to reconvene our services at Rakhial and strengthen our footprint in Gujarat in line with our growth strategy for India."

Shell, he said, was confident that locals from the area along with transient public and long distance travellers will take full advantage of our retail offerings.