Oil marketing companies (OMC) Indian Oil and Hindustan Petroleum have brazenly missed the March 31 deadline, the third time now, for automating their retail petrol pump outlets. With little choice, the petroleum ministry has decided to extend the deadline for the automation project by another six months to October 2008. Bharat Petroleum managed to stick to the third deadline.

The government initially wanted the project to be completed by March 31 last year. But that could not be met by the oil marketing cos and it was extended to December 31, 2007. Again the OMCs could not meet the targets and were asked to complete the project by March 31 this year.

Under the project, Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, had to automate all their petrol pumps that were selling more than 200 kilo litres of fuel every month. The main objective behind the petrol pump automation was to check adulteration.

Experts felt that the maintenance of an inventory record through e-mode would make it easy for oil company officials to detect adulteration. To start with, the government asked OMCs to automate all petrol pumps selling more than 200 kilolitres of fuel. The retail outlets not falling under this category would be automated in next phase, an oil ministry official said.

Speaking to The Indian Express, a Hindustan Petroleum official said, “Against the target of automating 1,135 such petrol pumps, we have automated 885 retail outlets. We are expected to add 100 more retail outlets by this month. The entire process is likely to be completed by May end or maximum middle of June this year.”

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