India to go directly to Euro-VI fuel: Dharmendra Pradhan

In a bid to curb vehicular pollution, India will go straight from Euro-IV complaint petrol and diesel to Euro-VI fuel by 2020, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said today.

"We are not going for Bharat Stage V (or Euro-V) petrol and diesel as there is not much difference between BS-V and BS-VI (Euro-VI) fuel. We will bring BS-VI fuel by 2020," he told reporters here.

India currently has BS-III, equivalent of Euro-III specifications, across the country and BS-IV in major cities. "BS-IV will be supplied in most big cities by April 2016 and all over the country from April 2017," he said.

"From BS-IV we will directly go to BS-VI," he said. "We don't see a need for refineries to first invest in upgrading fuel quality to BS-V and then again invest to upgrade to BS-VI."

Oil refineries will need to invest Rs 80,000 crore in upgrading petrol and diesel quality to meet cleaner fuel specifications by 2020.

Previously, the fuels meeting Euro-IV or Bharat Stage (BS)-IV specifications were to be supplied throughout the country by April 2017 and BS-V or Euro-V grade fuel by April 1, 2020.

But now instead of step-wise upgradation from BS-IV to BS-V and then from BS-V to BS-VI, the government plans to switch over directly from BS-IV to BS-VI auto fuels by April 1, 2020, he said.

BS-IV fuels contain 50 parts per million (ppm) sulphur, while BS-V and BS-VI grade fuel will have 10 ppm sulphur.

Oil refineries had previously upgraded technology and invested over Rs 55,000 crore for production and supply of BS-III/IV fuels. Another Rs 80,000 crore investment would be required for further upgradation.

Currently, BS-IV auto fuels are being supplied in whole of northern India covering J&K, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, parts of Rajasthan and western UP. The rest of the country has BS-III grade fuel.

From April 1, 2016, all of Goa, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha, Union Territories of Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Andaman & Nicobar will get BS-IV fuel. The rest of the country will get supplies of BS-IV fuel from April 1, 2017.

"This government reiterates it commitment to reducing carbon footprint. We have given in writing to the NGT on reducing fuel emission and we will stick to that," Pradhan said.

To reduce pollution and green house gas (GHG) emissions, use of gas as transport fuel (CNG) in cities is being encouraged.

India, he said, has pledged to improve the carbon emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35% by 2030 from 2005 level and to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.