New Delhi (India) March 26:Nayara Energy, India's largest private fuel retailer, announced on Thursday that they have increased the price of petrol by 5 per liter and diesel by 3 a liter. This is a partial pass on recent global oil price hikes due to the war in West Asia, the company said. 

Petrol up by ₹5, diesel by ₹3 per litre at Nayara

According to sources, even though Nayara, predominantly owned by Russia's Rosneft, increased petrol prices by 5 per litre and diesel by 3, the actual level of the price hike varies from state to state depending on the factors such as local taxes like VAT. In some cases, the increase is as high as 5.30 per litre for petrol. Nayara Energy, which has 6,967 of India's 102,075 petrol pumps, has decided to charge consumers for a portion of the cost increases, according to sources.

Regarding the fuel prices, one of the highest prices is being reported from Hyderabad where a litre of petrol cost 107.46 on Thursday. Prices in other cities like Mumbai and Kolkata have also mostly stayed above the 100 per litre mark. Hyderabad leads tier 1 cities in diesel prices with 95.70 per litre.

Panic buying, long queues seen in Assam

Even though the government kept reassuring that the country does not have a fuel shortage, panic buying of petrol and diesel was reported from various parts of Assam on Wednesday after fuel shortage reports circulated on social media. Besides petrol, the LPG crisis has also led to long queues outside of the filling stations and depots.

IOC, BPCL, HPCL struggle as crude jumps nearly 50%

Fuel marketing companies in India have been struggling as prices of retail petrol and diesel were kept unchanged despite international oil prices jumping by nearly 50% since February 28.
IOC, BPCL, and HPCL have been bearing the brunt of losses whenever the crude prices are really high and at the same time have been making up their margins once the prices are lowered.
While the retail prices of regular petrol and diesel have not been changed, these companies have recently hiked the price of premium-grade petrol by Rs 2 per litre and have taken the step of drastically increasing the bulk diesel rates that are sold to industrial consumers by about Rs 22 per litre.