Morung Express News
Dimapur | August 1
Fuel prices remained unchanged for the 15th straight day across India on August 1, however, the cost of petrol and diesel fell marginally in Nagaland.
Public sector-run Oil marketing companies (OMCs) have kept petrol and diesel prices unchanged since July 18.
Information on the official IndianOil One app, however, highlighted a marginal fall in fuel prices by 0.8 paise for petrol and 0.7-0.8 paise for diesel in Nagaland on Sunday.
Accordingly, petrol and diesel, which were retailing at the same rates as in July 17 till July 31, when the prices were last revised, saw slight fall in on August 1.
With this, in Tuensang, where fuel is costliest in Nagaland, the price of a litre of petrol decreased from Rs 103.48 on Saturday to Rs 103.40 on Sunday.
In Dimapur, where fuels is cheapest in the State, the cost of a litre of petrol dropped from Rs 100.36 on July 31 to Rs 100.28 a litre on August 1.
The cost of diesel in Tuensang also fell from Rs 94.76 a litre on July 31 to Rs 94.68 on August 1. Likewise, in Dimapur, it fell from Rs 91.99 to Rs 91.92 a litre.
The cost of petrol in all locations in Nagaland, however, remained above the Rs 100-a-litre mark. Petrol prices breached the Rs 100-a-litre mark across Nagaland on July 15, with Dimapur joining other districts in reaching the threshold. Tuensang and Kiphire were the first to cross the threshold on June 26.
With a pause since July 18, petrol prices have been hiked nine times, while remaining stable for 22 times in July. Diesel prices, however, have been revised upward 5 times, while remaining unchanged for 25 times and decreasing once.
Fuel prices differ from state to state depending on the incidence of local taxes such as value-added tax (VAT) and freight charges. OMCs revise fuel prices daily benchmarking retail fuel prices and dollar exchange rate.
According to IANS news agency, one of the main reasons for the pause is an over 10 per cent fall seen in global oil prices with benchmark crude sliding to $69 a barrel from a high of over $77 a barrel just a couple of weeks ago. It has again risen close to over $75 a barrel on strong demand projections.
The Brent crude oil is currently around $75.41 per barrel, it said.
With OPEC reaching an agreement to raise crude production, oil prices were expected to remain soft. This could make way for fuel prices in India to actually fall after a long interval, it was expected, it added.
