Ministry of petroleum and natural gas was examining a proposal which envisages creating a central pool for freight cost collected by all four state run oil marketing companies.
According to the proposal, a central pool would be created where oil marketing companies would deposit their freight collection. Companies would be paid back for freight cost from the pool on the actual basis.
The idea behind creating such a fund is to address the issue of differential cost oil companies borne while selling products at inland locations of the country compared to coastal areas. Pool collection was estimated to be in the region of around Rs 8,200 crore every year.
The proposal has been put forward by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC)-IBP combine which has complained that it was losing money owing to uniform prices across locations despite different cost of delivery. Oil companies had asked for higher price in inland areas vis-
