The government’s plans of automating the petrol pumps’ of three state-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) have hit the doldrums. Oil ministry sources said that despite having set deadlines three times, they would not be able to meet the target.

Bharat Petroleum is the only company claiming to be able to meet the March 31 deadline for the automation of all its petrol pumps selling more than 200 kilolitres. However, Indian Oil and Hindustan Petroleum do not see any such possibility.

Indian Oil has identified 1,750 petrol pumps that are selling more than 200 kilolitres a month. The company has automated around 1,000 such stations. Company officials said they were working on the automation of another 550 such fuel stations. The process, they said, is likely to be completed by December this year.

Hindustan Petroleum has 1,200 such petrol pumps. The company has already automated 800 stations and plans to wind up the process by June 30 this year. Bharat Petroleum has around 1,600 such stations and has already covered 1,304 of them. The company claims it will be able to meet the March 31 deadline.

The government was of the opinion that the maintenance of an inventory record through e-mode would make it easy for officials of oil companies to detect adulteration. To start with, the government asked OMCs to automate all petrol pumps selling more than 200 kilolitres of fuel.

While Indian Oil has 17,000 petrol-dispensing stations across the country, both Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum have 8,000 stations each. The stations selling more than 200 kilolitres of fuel make up just about 20 per cent of all the petrol pumps of the three OMCs.

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