Amid India’s transition to cleaner fuel, the country’s second-largest fuel retailer Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd plans to continue expanding its traditional fuel retailing outlets along with electric charging facilities.
The company will add around 1,000 petrol and diesel fuel stations in a year on average in the next 2-3 years, while it plans to more than double its electric vehicle charging stations to 5,000 locations.
“We are putting up outlets (petrol and diesel) in spaces where we do not have representations. On average, we intend to add around 1,000 retail outlets per year. 25,000 could be a good number we are looking for outlets over the medium term,” Amit Garg, Hindustan Petroleum’s director of marketing, said today on the sidelines of an industry event.
For electric vehicles, Hindustan Petroleum has already outlined its plans to set up charging stations at 5,000 locations by 2023-24. The company is also collaborating with electric vehicles companies and infrastructure companies, such as Ather Energy, Hero MotoCorp, Ola Electric, Tata Power and Honda Power, to set up charging stations and explore battery-swapping stations on revenue-sharing models.
Hindustan Petroleum had a total of 21,186 fuel retail outlets and 2,037 electric vehicle charging locations at the end of 2022-23. Currently, the company has around 21,500 fuel retail outlets and 2,300 charging stations.
“We are a country where energy needs are going to be much more than what they are today. I think fossil fuels in India are going to stay for a much longer period than any other place across the globe in the kind of market we are in,” he said.
Meanwhile, India’s largest oil marketing company Indian Oil Corp had 36,285 outlets at the end of the previous year while it had 5,461 electric vehicle charging stations, including 76 battery swapping stations.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Heavy Industries sanctioned Rs 800 crore under the FAME-II scheme to India Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum to set up 7,432 public fast-charging stations across the country. The installation of these chargers is expected to be completed by March end. At the end of 2022-23, there were 6,586 charging stations across the country.
On hydrogen as fuel, Garg said it is something that the world might move on. “As of now, it is not going to be easy to replace as a fuel through hydrogen. It is very capital intensive and for the customer it is expensive. There are several challenges. He noted that with the government’s target to produce 5 million tons of green hydrogen annually by 2030, the company will be moving in that direction.