Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's announcement of a 5% cut in the freight rates for moving petrol and diesel is indeed an effort to bring back the oil traffic from roads to the railways. The reduction in freight rate, announced as part of the Railway Budget proposals for 2008-09, is not sufficient enough to warrant any cut in the consumer prices of petrol and diesel. The freight rate cut will help the oil Companies

Even though the government has recently allowed state-owned oil marketing Companies to marginally increase the prices of petrol and diesel, one doesn't need to use rocket science to figure out that the hike is just not enough to help Indian Oil Corp, HPCL and BPCL to tide over their losses. These downstream Companies have been selling petrol, diesel LPG and kerosene much below the actual price. To keep voters happy, the government decided to limit the hike in a range of Re 1-Rs 2 a litre when Rs 9 for petrol and Rs 11 for diesel were actually required. Also, the prices of LPG and kerosene were left untouched. This was when kerosene needed to be increased to Rs 20 a litre and an LPG cylinder priced close to Rs 330. At the same time, a partial relief package was promised to the oil Companies. This included issuance of oil bonds of a higher quantum

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) on Monday said it has reconfigured its proposed mega petrochemical plant at Dahej in Gujarat, bringing down the cost by Rs 1,100 crore to Rs 12,440 crore. The board of directors of ONGC, which met here on Monday, approved the revised configuration of Dahej Petrochemicals Project being implemented by the company's subsidiary ONGC Petro-additions Ltd (OPAL). The project was initially configured with a styrene butadiene rubber (SBR)

AFTER winning a new term as president by a landslide a year ago, Hugo Ch

State government is contemplating to set up a petro chemical corridor in the coastal area shortly. Minister for major industries J. Geeta Reddy announced this while responding to a query from local MLA Routhu Surya Prakasa Rao during question hour in the State Legislative Assembly. In a statement issued by the legislator here on Wednesday, a coastal petro chemical corridor spread over about 175 km distance, connecting Kakinada and Visakhapatnam at a cost of Rs 60,000 crores, would be coming up.

Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's energy minister, on Friday rejected concerns that PDVSA, the state oil company, would be affected by attempts by ExxonMobil to freeze assets worth $12bn. Exxon won court orders on Thursday in the UK, the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles to freeze PDVSA's global assets in an attempt to secure compensation for operations lost to President Hugo Chavez's nationalisation drive last year.

A midst oppositions from environmental groups, the Inter-American Development Bank has approved a us $400-million loan for the construction of a liquefied natural gas (lng) project in Peru. The

The Peruvian government has allowed two oil companies to explore oil in remote parts of the Amazonian forests inhabited by uncontacted tribes. The decision comes after a Peruvian government

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court has issued an injunction preventing the government-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation from selling liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to the multinational corporation Shell. The

Residents of waterfront villages around Nigeria's oil capital Port Harcourt are relieved as a plan to demolish their homes has been shelved, following the dismissal of the governor of the oil rich