Karnataka petro dealers plan protest

The Karnataka State Federation of Petroleum Dealers will stage protest by stopping supply of petroleum products for 15 minutes on October 19 and 26, urging the government to fulfil their demands.

Addressing newspersons in Mangaluru on Tuesday, K Vishwas Shenoy, general secretary of the federation, said that one of their demands was the revision of dealers’ commission.

Dealers’ commission A decision was taken at a meeting between oil marketing companies (OMCs) and the All India Petroleum Dealers’ Association to revise the dealers’ commission every six months. He said that the industry representatives, who made presentations on the dealers’ margin, have not taken into account the additional expenses mentioned in the Apoorva Chandra Committee report while fixing this. Those expenses should also be taken into consideration during the revision, he said.

The Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had constituted the committee in 2010 to resolve various issues raised by retail dealers and OMCs.

The committee had suggested some recommendations in its report in 2012.

Stating that the OMCs supply ethanol-blended petroleum products to the retail outlets, Shenoy said the method followed in blending is not proper in some cases. The faulty blending will affect the storage tanks at the retail outlets and the vehicle engines.