Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday launched a supply of BS-IV grade fuel in 12 towns through video-conferencing from here.
“We begin a new era of clean transportation fuels that would benefit 1.25 billion citizens of our country by substantially reducing pollution levels in our cities,” Mr. Pradhan said complementing three oil marketing companies for working in unison for launching the BS-IV grade fuels as per schedule.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not made commitment under any external pressure in Paris summit. Even though India is not a polluting country, it has shown commitment for reducing vehicular emission,” said the minister.
Mr. Pradhan asked oil companies to expedite their efforts to introduce BS-VI standards by April1, 2020
“We had started oil upgradation programme in 1991. Oil companies have achieved emission standards by continuously introducing advance technology and making huge capital expenditure. The oil industry has spent over Rs. 28,000 crore after 2010 for supplying BS-IV grade fuel. It was in addition to Rs. 35,000 crore already spent before 2010,” said Petroleum Secretary K. D. Tripathi.
Mr. Tripathi said oil companies would further spend ₹28,000 crore to supply BS-VI specification oil by 2020. As of now total investment made to upgrade oil comes to around ₹90,000 crore, he pointed out.
The Supreme Court has banned the sale of BS-III vehicles from April 1. “On and from April 1, 2017, such vehicles that are not BS-IV compliant shall not be sold in India by any manufacturer or dealer, that is to say that such vehicles, whether two-wheeler, three- wheeler, four-wheeler or commercial vehicles will not be sold,” a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta had ordered.
According to Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, India has reduced its diesel content from 10,000 ppm in the most of the country in 1996 to a maximum of 50 ppm in 2017. The proposed BS-VI regulation will reduce diesel sulphur content to a maximum 10 ppm, enabling the introduction of advanced emission control technologies, including diesel particulate filters and selective catalyst reduction systems, which will be needed to meet BS-VI emission standards. As the technology for BS-V is not very different, it was decided to go straight to BS-VI grade fuels from BS-IV.
