NSE-listed Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) is actively looking to expand its presence in the

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oil and gas retailing business by increasing its retail network by over a fifth (or another 2,000 retail outlets) over the next four to five years.

A senior company official told Financial Chronicle, “We are adding around 700 retail outlets in the current financial year and plan to take our total retail outlets to around 11,000 in next four to five years.” BPCL, at present, has around 9,289 retail outlets which offer diesel, petrol, CNG and LPG to various types of customers across India. “The planned rollout would entail an investment of Rs 250 crore for the current fiscal and around Rs 1,000 crore for the remaining 2,000 outlets. The funding would be through internal accruals,” said the official.

The new retail outlets would come up in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The retailing of fuels such as CNG and Auto LPG would happen through separate stations, based on the availability of gas. “In the western corridor we would look at Gujarat and Maharashtra for CNG and LPG offerings for the transport sector,” the official added.

During 2010-2011, BPCL added 598 retail outlets to its tally of around 8,600, with a major focus on site quality in urban areas and strategic expansion on the highways. In the highway sector, the throughput per outlet for the one stop truck stop (OSTS) outlets stood at 867 kilo litre (KL) per month. OSTS outlets accounted for over seven per cent of the total HSD sales during the year. During the year 2010-11, BPCL retail sales volume grew 8.6 per cent to 18.69 million metric tonnes (MMT) with motor spirit (MS) and high-speed diesel (HSD) sales growing by 9.46 per cent and 9.88 per cent respectively.

Although the total sales volumes of MS and HSD increased, the branded fuels continued their decline. The sales of branded MS declined by 30.21 per cent and that of branded HSD fell 45.2 per cent. “This position is not likely to change till such time as the difference in the basis of taxation between branded and unbranded fuels continue leading to high price differentials,” the official said.