In July India’s fuel demand fell lower, posting its fifth consecutive year-on -year decline, government data showed on Tuesday as a spike in Coronavirus cases and floods in many parts of the country restricted economic activity.
11.7% lower compared with a year earlier and 3.5% below the prior month, consumption of refined fuels, a proxy for oil demand, fell to 15.68 million tonnes in July. Data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell(RPAC) of the Ministry of Petroleum & natural Gas showed.
Diesel consumption, which accounts for two-fifth of India’s overall fuel uses and that is widely used for transportation and for the country’s irrigation needs, drop to 5.52 million tonnes last month from 6.31 million tonnes in June.
On the yearly basis the demand of diesel fell approx of 19.3%. Sales of gasoline, or petrol, drop by 10.3% from year earlier to 2.26 million tones and were down 08% from 2.28 million tonnes in June.
As a higher retail price also been impacted the demand of the world’s third-biggest oil consumer and as virus cases continue to rise. India stands third after United States and Brazil with over 2 million cases, in addition to it heavy rainsand floods have affected millions of people and battered industrial and construction activity in some of the Indian States.
India’s top refiner, Indian Oil Corp, said previous month it would continue to operate its refineries below capacity in 2020/21, and that it didn’t seen any recovery in demand to pre-COVID levels ” in the near future.”
In April when whole country was in lockdown to curb outbreak slowed the economic activity and travel leading to drop by halved in fuel consumption. July naptha sells fell 12.4% to 1.28 million tonnes from a year but rose 10% from June.
