Petroleum marketing criteria lowered
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, October 24 2019: Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reduced the Entry Level Barrier for marketing in petroleum products yesterday.

It may be mentioned that many private players, apart from various oil companies, are involved in trading and marketing petroleum products.

In a bid to expand the economic scope of petroleum industries by ensuring participation of more numbers of private players, the Entry Level Barrier came into force from 2002.With the revision in the Entry Level Barrier by the CCEA yesterday, private players now no longer need to have any prior experiences in oil exploration, oil production or refining if they wish to get involved in marketing of petroleum products.

In the past, private players needed to be one which had some kind of past investment in oil and gas sector if they wanted to get into petroleum products' marketing, but this criteria has been exempted as well in the latest revision.

Another major change in the new Entry Level Barrier is that now, the business turnover of the private players has to be Rs 250 crore as opposed to the Rs 2000 crore turnover of the past.

The new Entry Level Barrier has also made some changes to the earlier criteria which required the private players to have at least a CNG, LNG, Bio-Fuel or Electric Charging facility within three years of opening a gas pump.

The new revision will now enable many private players to step into the petroleum sector in Manipur as well.

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