Market Now: Oil stocks extend fall; BPCL, HPCL down 2%

NEW DELHI: BPCL (down 2.10 per cent), HPCL (down 1.74 per cent), Indraprastha Gas (down 1.54 per cent) and Indian Oil Corporation (down 1.52 per cent) continued their fall on Thursday amid surging crude oil prices globally.

Media reports suggested that some oil marketing companies have been asked to absorb up to Re 1 a litre hike.

However, on Wednesday PTI reported heads of IOC and HPCL saying that the government has not asked state-owned oil firms so far to avoid raising the retail price of petrol and diesel in view of next month's elections in Karnataka.


The BSE Oil & Gas index was trading 0.73 per cent down at 14,608 around 10:35 am (IST).

Oil India (down 1.41 per cent), Castrol India (down 0.85 per cent), Petronet LNG (down 0.55 per cent), GAIL (India) (down 0.15 per cent) and ONGC (down 0.03 per cent) were also seen in the red.

Meanwhile, shares of Reliance Industries (up 0.22 per cent) were marginally up around that time.

Equity benchmarks were cautious amid weakness in global stocks and surging oil prices.

Asian stocks came under pressure on Thursday as the threat of imminent US military action in Syria rattled investors and sent oil prices to their highest levels since late 2014 on concerns about supply, Reuters reported.

The NSE Nifty50 index was up 7 points at 10,424, while the BSE Sensex was up 60 points at 34,000.

IT stocks TCS and Infosys jumped up to 3 per cent in the Sensex index after recent fall in Indian rupee against the US dollar.

Dr Reddy's Labs and State Bank of India were the top losers in the Sensex index.