Reliance Industries (RIL) has reopened about one-fifth of its 1,400 fuel stations, which were shut down when state firms were selling heavily subsidized fuel.
RIL had shut down all of its 1,432 petrol pumps around March 2008 because of huge losses in incurred in trying to match its public sector firms, who sold fuel at rates much lower than their cost as they got government subsidies.
RIL and Essar Oil, the only other private refiner in India, had together captured about 17 per cent of domestic retail market for diesel and 10 per cent of petrol by 2006 before heavily subsidised sales by state-run firms took a heavy toll on private firms’ fuel sales.
