India's fuel sales up by 5.5% in May

India's fuel sales rose by a healthy 5.5 per cent in May on back of double digit growth in diesel and cooking gas consumption.

Fuel sales rose to 12.364 million tonnes in May from 11.717 million tonnes a year ago, according to provisional data from the oil ministry in New Delhi.

Diesel, which makes up for over 45 per cent of all petroleum products consumed in the country, saw demand expand by 10.9 per cent to 5.862 million tonnes.

LPG consumption rose by 13.7 per cent to 1.186 million tonnes while sale of petrol was up by 7.9 per cent to 1.351 million tonnes.

Of the total, 978,000 tonnes was sold by private firms, down by 19.5 per cent from 1.214 million tonnes sales in May 2010.

During 2011-12 fiscal, fuel demand rose by 4.9 per cent to 24.404 million tonnes with public sector firms seeing an expansion of 6.6 per cent at 22.376 million tonnes.

Private firms like Essar Oil saw sales drop by 11.2 per cent at 2.028 million tons.

Diesel consumption was up by 6.2 per cent to 11.322 million tonnes while LPG sales jumped by 10.9 per cent to 2.317 million tonnes.

Petrol consumption was up by 7.7 per cent to 2.553 million tonnes.