Vehicles lined up in Guntur City for petrol and diesel. File.
| Photo Credit: T. Vijaya Kumar
Petrol and diesel prices on Friday (May 15, 2026) were hiked by ₹3 per litre each as oil companies passed on part of the spike in global energy prices to consumers.
Petrol price was hiked to ₹97.77 per litre from ₹94.77 in the national capital. Diesel now costs ₹90.67 as against ₹89.67 per litre previously, according to industry sources.
The retail selling price of petrol in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai will now be ₹106.68, ₹108.74, and ₹103.67 respectively.
Diesel, on the other hand, will now cost ₹93.14 in Mumbai, ₹95.13 in Kolkata, and ₹95.25 in Chennai.
The increase is a 10th of the desired hike needed to account for the surge in global energy rates since the start of the West Asia conflict.
State-owned oil firms had kept fuel price unchanged for 11 weeks despite a surge in input cost, but passed on part of the increase once operations became financially unsustainable, the sources said.
Prices have remained on freeze since April 2022, but had a one-off reduction of ₹2 a litre each on petrol and diesel in March 2024 just before the Lok Sabha elections.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) had abandoned the daily price revision in April 2022 to insulate domestic consumers from a steep price increase that was warranted because of international oil prices shooting through the roof post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They incurred heavy losses in the first half of the 2022-23 fiscal year, which they recouped when rates fell in subsequent months.
But the war in West Asia has again sent international oil prices soaring by over 50%.
The basket of crude oil that India imports averaged $69 per barrel in February before the war in West Asia broke out. It averaged $113-114 per barrel in subsequent months.
Published – May 15, 2026 06:54 am IST
