Three government-owned oil companies just lost ₹75,000 crore in three months — because they were ordered to sell fuel cheaper than it cost them.
Now they want the government to pay it back.
And the government isn't sure it can say yes.
Here's the full picture.
Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum control most of India's pumps.
Since February 28, when the US-Iran war broke out, they've kept petrol, diesel and LPG prices frozen — even as crude oil went haywire.
Stay with me, this matters.
Every time crude climbs, these companies bleed a little more at every pump in the country.
The companies quietly waited, hoping crude would settle and they'd claw the losses back.
It didn't.
So now the oil ministry is drafting a compensation plan.
But here's the catch — it needs the finance ministry's sign-off before it even reaches the Cabinet.
Expect weeks, maybe months, of back-and-forth.
The government is already sitting on losses of its own.
👉 About ₹10 per litre in taxes it's choosing not to collect on petrol and diesel.
And there's a deeper problem: petrol and diesel are officially deregulated fuels.
Compensating losses on them quietly breaks that principle — and opens the door for private retailers to demand the same treatment.
LPG has always been treated differently.
The Centre paid ₹22,000 crore in 2022 and ₹30,000 crore last year to cover LPG losses alone.
For petrol and diesel, the last big move was a ₹30,000 crore equity infusion back in the 2023 budget — support, not a straight cash payout.
This isn't just an accounting dispute.
It's a test of how long India can keep pump prices frozen while a war half a continent away keeps setting the real bill.
Someone is absorbing that cost.
Right now, it's three state-run companies — and the question is who pays them back, and how much of the deregulation story quietly gets rewritten to make that happen.
That's all for now!
