Essar Oil to more than double filling stations to 5,000

Mumbai, Aug 18 (PTI) Essar Oil aims to expand its petrolpump network to 5,000 over the next 12-15 months from 2,400 atpresent, a senior company official said. The Ruias-run firm, which has agreed to sell a majoritystake to Russia’s Rosneft, expects its export volume to nearlyhalve from the present 45-50 per cent once these 5,000 outletsare operational. The company also expects sales volume to touch 10 millionKL over the next two-three years from 2.5 million KL now. "Oil price deregulation has given us an excellentopportunity and we’ve been able to ramp up our network fromabout 1,600 a year ago to about 2,400 now. "We plan to take this to 4,300 operational outlets byMarch 2017 which should lead to significant rise in salesvolume and 5,000 thereafter," Essar Oil MD and CEO Lalit KumarGupta told PTI. He also said a good number of new filling stations willcome up in small towns, "especially in tier-2 and 3 cities andalong highways." When asked about investments, he said it will need aboutRs 2,100 crore, mainly through franchisees, and create nearly20,000 new jobs in the next one year alone. The government de-regulated diesel prices in a phasedmanner from October 2014 following the massive crash in crudeprices, thereby throwing open the fuel retail sector. Essar Oil, which operates the second largest privatesector refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat with 23 million tonneannual capacity, is aligning its retail expansion plans inline with industry growth, he said. "We see our retail sales to increase annually to about10 million KL over the next two-three years from 2.5 millionKL now," Gupta said. His optimism comes from the falling prices, increasedmobility due to faster urbanisation coupled with the smartcity projects and focus on improving infrastructure. Essar Oil was the first domestic private sector companyto enter fuel retailing back in 2003. (MORE) PTI BEN KRKABMJMF