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Oil marketing companies (OMCs) have floated a fresh tender for procurement of 1,330 million litres of ethanol for blending with petrol for the period December 2013 to November 2014.
Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily on Friday informed the Lok Sabha that OMCs would procure ethanol from domestic sources to achieve the mandatory requirement of five per cent ethanol blending with petrol by October in areas of the country where sufficient quantity of ethanol is available. In other parts, blending might be increased progressively, depending upon the availability of ethanol to reach the mandatory level. The new tender was floated on July 22.
The government has launched the ethanol blended petrol programme in November 2006, in the entire country except the northeastern states, Jammu & Kashmir, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.
Blending of ethanol with petrol would have very little impact on import of crude oil, since petrol is only a by-product of the distillation process and overall blending of ethanol is limited to five per cent. Moily added the procurement price of ethanol would henceforth be decided between OMCs and ethanol suppliers.
The first tender was floated in January, for an annual requirement of 1,050 million litres for five per cent blending.
