OREANDA-NEWS. India's oil product sales increased 7.8% year on year to 13.12 million mt in January, led by higher consumption of gasoil and gasoline, provisional data by the Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell, the oil ministry's research arm, showed. But January oil product sales were 2.3% lower compared with 13.43 million mt in December.

Gasoil sales rose 8% year on year to 5.80 million mt in January, but were down 5.3% from December sales of 6.13 million mt.

The Indian government on January 17 announced a full deregulation of gasoil prices for bulk consumers and a parti al deregulation of prices for retail users, which has resulted in price increases for both markets. PPAC said that the growth in gasoil sales has moderated following price increases, after peaking in August 2012.Gasoline sales in January, at 1.30 million mt, hit double-digit growth of 12% year on year, but this was 3.7% lower than December volumes.

Naphtha sales, meanwhile, jumped 22.5% year on year to 1.06 million mt in January, but were flat from December. LPG sales came in at 1.32 million mt in January, unchanged year on year but 1.5% higher than December. The Indian government in January announced that domestic households would get nine 14.2 kg LPG cylinders a year at subsidized rates, instead of the six cylinders announced in September last year, with the rest to be supplied at market rates fixed by oil companies.

Fuel oil sales fell 11.4% year on year to 599,000 mt in January, but were 3% higher than December volumes. PPAC said the expected increase in fuel oil consumption did not materialize after diesel price increases as a couple of fertilizer plants in the north had switched over to gas. PPAC said it was now expecting fuel oil sales to decline further in the near future.