OMCs

Every time India has faced a major crisis - whether devastating floods, a once-in-a-century pandemic or the latest conflict in West Asia that threatened global oil supplies - it has been the country's state-run oil companies that have quietly kept fuel flowing. For decades, India's public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) have often been criticised for low returns, government intervention in fuel pricing and bloated operations. They have twice been put on the block for privatisation, with plans to sell Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) gathering momentum in 2002 before being halted by a Supreme Court ruling and again in 2020, before the process was abandoned after failing to attract enough bids. Yet every national emergency has reinforced why governments have been reluctant to loosen their grip on companies that control the country's energy lifeline, analysts and industry officials said. When unprecedented floods submerged Chennai in

The Centre has restored non-domestic LPG supplies to pre-conflict levels and partially resumed bulk LPG allocations as energy supplies improve following the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz

Higher global LPG prices and limited pass-through to household consumers have resulted in Rs 22,000 crore of under-recoveries for oil marketing companies since March

A reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and recovery in West Asian energy supplies could improve margins for oil marketers, gas distributors and LNG importers

Oil market companies (OMCs) gain, while upstream oil companies fall after brent crude oil prices fell

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The government has asked state-run oil marketing companies to maintain at least 30 days of LPG reserves as supplies from West Asia remain constrained

The Centre has flagged rising diversion of discounted retail fuel by industrial users even as public-sector oil firms absorb heavy losses to shield consumers

Oil prices slipped to a two-week low on Monday amid optimism over a potential US-Iran agreement

Stocks to Watch today, May 25, 2026: Shares of oil marketing companies will remain in focus today after petrol and diesel prices were raised by ₹2.61-2.71 per litre on Monday

The government said panic buying and bulk diesel consumers shifting to retail outlets triggered temporary fuel shortages at some petrol pumps

IOC and HPCL reported robust March-quarter earnings, but rising crude prices, LPG under-recoveries and geopolitical risks continue to cloud the outlook for FY27

Indian Oil reported a 56.6 per cent Y-o-Y increase in net profit to ₹11,377.51 crore, compared with ₹7,264.85 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal

Petrol now costs ₹98.64 a litre in the national capital, from earlier ₹97.77 a litre and diesel is priced higher at ₹91.58 per litre

Stocks to Watch today, May 19, 2026: Adani Group stocks, Indian Oil, JSW Steel, Astral, and Lupin are some of the key stocks to watch today

India will continue purchasing Russian crude oil despite the expiry of the US waiver, while fuel retailers' under-recoveries have narrowed after the recent price hike

A Rs 3-per-litre increase in petrol and diesel prices has helped state-run oil marketing companies trim daily losses by nearly a quarter, reducing overall losses to around Rs 750 crore per day from Rs 1,000 crore, a senior oil ministry official said Monday. However, elevated global crude prices and a weak rupee continue to keep pump rates below cost-recovery levels. At a news briefing, Sujata Sharma, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said a bailout package, in the form of a government subsidy to make up for losses state-owned oil companies are incurring on selling petrol, diesel and cooking gas LPG below cost, is "still not on the table". International oil prices rose sharply after the US-Israeli war against Iran triggered the largest-ever oil supply disruption. To keep the domestic market insulated, the state-owned oil companies continued to sell fuel at two-year-old rates till May 15, when prices of petrol and diesel were raised by Rs 3 per litre. The

The upward revision in prices for both fuels, said Jyotivardhan Jaipuria, founder and managing director at Valentis Advisors, was already expected though the quantum of ₹3 per litre seems too less.

Rajesh Bhosale, technical analyst at Angel One highlights that BPCL and IOC have consistently faced resistance around their respective 50-day EMAs on the charts in recent past.

March crude procurement costs for Indian OMCs remained steady year-on-year in dollar terms and rose only slightly from February, despite the West Asia conflict