India may miss the April 1, 2005 target of conforming to Euro-III emission norms in metro cities and Euro-II norms in the rest of the country due to inability of refiners to supply the specified category of petrol and diesel.
Except for refineries at Mangalore, Chennai and North-East, all other refineries would not be ready to start producing the fuels with ultra low sulphur and benzene content, a top government official said.
"We may need to push the deadline by at least six months," he said.
IOC's Mathura, Panipat and Haldia refineries, which are supposed to supply Euro-III fuels to Delhi and Kolkata, would be ready for producing diesel with 0.035 per cent sulphur and cetane number 51 and petrol with 1 per cent benzene and octane number 91 only by March 2005.
The Mumbai refineries of BPCL and HPCL would be ready by February 2005 and June-July 2005.
The hi-tech Jamnagar refinery of Reliance Industries too may default as problems at the refinery's hydrogen unit forced it to write to the petroleum ministry on December 7 stating its inability to produce the clean fuels before August 2005.
"To begin a smooth rollout of the clean fuel programme we need to stock ultra low sulphur and benzene content petrol and diesel at various locations from January onwards," the official said.
The government's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell has convened a meeting of public and private sector refiners in Mumbai next week to assess the availability and suggest a revised time-table for rolling out the clean fuel programme.
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