Government-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) may witness a 52% jump in losses on account of selling fuel below cost at state-mandated prices to Rs.2 trillion in the next financial year, said R.S. Butola, chairman, Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC), the nation’s largest fuel retailer. Such an increase will impact the financials of government-owned OMCs such as IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), which currently register...

Consumers to be given time to comply with Ministry order The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has brought in an amendment to its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Regulation of Supply and Distribution) Order 2000 making the Unique Identification Number (UID) under the Aadhaar project must for availing LPG refills. The move is aimed at removing multiple connections and those availing cylinders in third party name and to clean up the LPG consumer...

-Express News Service   The Group of Ministers on Corruption has asked the Law Ministry to formulate "concrete proposals" on constitutional and statutory amendments that would be required to introduce state funding of elections. According to a government statement, the Law Ministry had made a presentation to the Group of Ministers on this subject on September 30. After that the ministerial group had directed the ministry to formulate specific proposals, excluding such areas where...

-The Hindu   The Group of Ministers (GoM) meant to consider measures to tackle corruption has directed the Ministry of Law to formulate concrete proposals on Constitutional and statutory amendments needed to consider feasibility of State funding of elections. The GoM headed by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is mandated to look at a range of policy initiatives and action required to address corruption. In its first report in September, the GoM had...

-The Telegraph   The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has slammed the petroleum ministry for failing to take back 25 per cent of the acreage of the KG-D6 oil and gas block off the Andhra coast from Reliance Industries after it reneged on its drilling obligations. The long-awaited report from the CAG based on a detailed performance audit of the country’s hydrocarbon production sharing contracts was tabled in Parliament today. The nation’s auditor surprisingly...