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Pump prices are frozen while oil companies lose Rs 530 crore a day

By Strota Newsroom · 2026-09-26 · How Strota reports

Pump prices are frozen while oil companies lose Rs 530 crore a day
petroldieselOMCsICRAcrude oilIOC
Petrol and diesel did not move on 26 September across metros, even as ICRA put daily marketing losses at Rs 530 crore and the Indian crude basket had already hit 117.4 dollars a barrel.

Petrol and diesel prices did not move on 26 September 2026. After the daily 6:00 AM revision by state-run oil marketing companies, pumps in the big cities showed the same numbers as the day before, even though crude markets had spent the week swinging on news from the Strait of Hormuz and West Asia.

The quiet board at the pump is the story households see. The harder story sits one layer behind it. Rating agency ICRA estimates that Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum are together losing about Rs 530 crore every day on fuel marketing while retail prices stay frozen.

ICRA puts the current negative marketing margin at Rs 8 per litre on petrol and Rs 9 per litre on diesel. Domestic LPG adds another hole: under-recoveries of around Rs 300 per cylinder in September 2026. Those are not abstract accounting lines. They are the gap between what the companies pay for product and what they are allowed to charge at the nozzle.

City rates on 26 September show how local taxes and freight still create a wide map even when the national freeze holds. New Delhi petrol stood at 102.12 and diesel at 95.20. Mumbai petrol was 111.21 and diesel 97.83. Kolkata printed 113.51 and 99.82. Chennai 107.77 and 99.55. Bengaluru 111.68 and 99.56. Hyderabad sat at the expensive end with petrol at 116.15 and diesel at 104.23.

Business Today put the national average at 111.21 for petrol and 97.83 for diesel. In Mumbai, Livemint noted only a tiny recent band between 111.18 and 111.21. That is stability for the driver. It is also a fixed selling price against a moving import cost.

How long has the freeze lasted. Indian Express reported that retail petrol and diesel prices have not changed for over three months, and that the last revision came in May: Rs 7.35 per litre on petrol and Rs 7.53 per litre on diesel across four rounds. NDTV Profit’s September 25 note said the same thing in shorter form: state-run marketers have not altered pump prices across India since May.

The crude side of the ledger moved much faster. ICRA, as carried by Business Standard and Moneycontrol, said the Indian crude basket rose to 117.4 dollars per barrel as on September 21, 2026, from an average of around 66 dollars a barrel in 2025-26. That is the basket India actually pays for, not a single futures contract on a screen.

ICRA linked the spike to the renewed US-Iran conflict, the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and heightened Houthi activity in the Red Sea. Prashant Vasisht, senior vice president at the agency, described sizeable marketing losses and LPG under-recoveries as the direct result of that route disruption and the price spike that followed.

By 26 September the futures tape had cooled from the peak without unlocking the pump. Business Today put Brent at 104.32 dollars a barrel and West Texas Intermediate at 92.41. Livemint’s market note said WTI fell about 2.3 percent to settle near 92 dollars, the first weekly drop since late August, as traders weighed talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. A 2 percent crude slide helps the import bill. It does not automatically rewrite a retail price that has been administratively still since May.

LPG is the quieter second front. ICRA put the cumulative negative LPG buffer at Rs 61,940 crore as on June 30, 2026. The loss per cylinder was about Rs 500 in the June quarter and still around Rs 300 in September. Cooking-gas under-recovery sits beside petrol and diesel as a third claim on cash flow inside the same three public marketers.

Indian Express laid out a sensitivity that shows why the freeze matters beyond one Saturday morning. If oil stays elevated beyond 105 dollars a barrel through the second half of the financial year and petrol and diesel are not revised up, the agency’s arithmetic points to under-recoveries of over Rs 64,000 crore on the two automobile fuels for 2026-27. That figure is a conditional ledger item, not a schedule of what will be charged at your local pump.

The politics of the freeze are plain in the reporting. Business Today said the government has no proposal at present to raise petrol and diesel rates even as global crude stays volatile. For households that is a pause in the monthly fuel bill. For IOC, BPCL and HPCL it is a forced choice to fund the difference through margins, working capital and short-term borrowings while they wait for either crude to fall further or policy to move.

What 26 September establishes is therefore a split screen. On one side, unchanged city boards from Delhi to Hyderabad and a national average still printed at 111.21 and 97.83. On the other, an ICRA daily loss of Rs 530 crore, negative Rs 8 and Rs 9 per litre on petrol and diesel, LPG stress around Rs 300 a cylinder, and an Indian basket that had already printed 117.4 dollars on September 21. The pump looks calm. The balance sheets underneath it are not.

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This story was written by the Strota Newsroom from publicly reported and publicly posted sources, drafted with AI assistance and checked against automated editorial-quality and accuracy gates, with human editorial oversight. Individuals who shared their experience on social media are not identified. See our editorial standards, sourcing and AI-use disclosure. Found an error? Tell us — we correct transparently.