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As the second wave of Covid-19 prompted more and more states to adopt restrictive measures, Indians were forced to keep their personal vehicles parked for weeks driving down the consumption of petrol to the lowest level in the past 12 months, data from Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell of the government show.

April vs May

The consumption of petrol declined to 1,990,000 tonnes in May, the lowest level since June 2000. It was 16.5% down even compared to April 2021, a month severely hit by the second wave.

The consumption of diesel dipped too, though not to the extent of petrol, since a number of states provided less restrictions on the movement of goods to keep supply chains open in order to ensure necessary commodities in the markets.

The consumption of diesel went down to 5,535,000 tonnes in May, the lowest since October 2020. However, compared to the consumption in April 2021 (6,683,000 tonnes) the decline was as sharp as petrol – at 17.17%.

Airlines

The state of the airlines industry can also be gauged from the fact that the consumption of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) dropped to 263,000 tonnes, which is the lowest since September 2020. The consumption in April was 413,000 tonnes or 1.57 times the demand in May.

Consumption of LPG crept up a bit to 2,168,000 tonnes compared to the 2,114,000 tonnes in the previous month of April – or by 2.5%. The consumption of LPG was higher than the May figure in all months between July 2020 and March 2021.

FY21 first drop

The demand of petro-fuel contracted by 9.1% in Covid-scarred FY21, a fall unmatched in more than the past two decades. In fact, this is the first time that fuel consumption fell in the country since 1998-99, the year from which well documented data is available.

In FY21, as the union government imposed a nationwide lockdown shutting down businesses, factories and restricted people from coming out, the consumption of diesel fell 12% and the demand for petrol dipped by 6.7%.

The restrictions were lifted in a graded manner from June onwards and the GDP fell by 7.3% during the year.