India launches flex fuel; E85 petrol to be ₹20 cheaper than regular fuel

Key points

• New Delhi: State-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) rolled out a high-ethanol petrol blend on Friday, priced about ₹20 per litre lower than regular fuel, as the government seeks to reduce the country's $120-billion annual oil import bill and tap rising production capacity in the domestic ethanol sector.
• Currently, about 48 retail outlets of public sector OMCs in the country offer this cleaner fuel, according to Hardeep Singh Puri, the Union minister for petroleum and natural gas.
• The government plans to scale it up to 500 retail outlets by December, to about 5,000 retail outlets by December 2027, and to raise India’s aggregate ethanol blending levels to nearly 26 per cent by 2030-31. The country currently has about 100,000 fuel stations, of which about 90,000 are state-run.
• “I think we have consciously structured the pricing to ensure that consumers are adequately compensated by making E85 approximately ₹20 per litre cheaper than...