India’s August fuel story: Petrol, diesel up, LPG down sharply
Strong vehicle sales this fiscal have contributed to strong petrol demand. Cumulative sales growth during April-August was 6.5% for petrol and 4.3% for diesel. A rapidly expanding economy and uneven monsoon have driven diesel sales to an unusually high growth rate of 6.5% in August. An industry executive said farmers in many regions have been increasingly using diesel for irrigation.
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Meanwhile, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) sales rose 1.4%, while cooking gas, or LPG, sales fell 16.1%. The return to growth for ATF in August points to a recovery in air traffic, which had been hit by the West Asia war and soaring fuel prices. For the April-August period, ATF sales declined 0.6%.
Cooking gas consumption, surprisingly, continued to fall in August despite rising imports. The fall during April-August stood at 15.9%. Industry executives attributed the August decline partly to a shift to piped natural gas among households, eateries and factories.
