Essar Oil plans to double the number of petrol pumps

Essar Oil plans to double its petrol pumps in the country to 5,600 in the next one and a half years. The company currently has 2,823 operational petrol pumps and will add another 2,800 pumps. Its retail sales at 1.34 million tonnes (mt) in 2015-16 grew by 127 per cent over the 590,000 tonnes sold in 2014-15. The company attributes the growth to the expansion of its retail network as well as to the opportunity presented to private players in the retail segment by the deregulation of diesel prices, thereby linking the price of diesel to the global market. Meanwhile, the company also plans to invest Rs 12 billion to upgrade certain units of its Vadinar refinery in Gujarat to help boost refining margins by $1.5 per barrel. In October 2016, Essar Oil’s promoters signed a pact to sell a 98 per cent stake in the company to Russia’s state-run Rosneft and its partners for about $13 billion.