The Hindu Business Line : India could miss April 1 clean fuel deadline

Mumbai/New Delhi, Sept. 15 With barely six months to go before the new emission norms become mandatory, it increasingly looks as if the April 1, 2010 deadline will not be met across the country.

On this date, 14 cities will graduate from the present Bharat Stage III (BS III) umbrella to BS IV while the rest of India makes the transition from BS II to BS III. In a nutshell, this means lower levels of vehicular emissions comprising hydrocarbons, nitrous gases, sulphur, carbon monoxide and particulate matter.

During the last round of clean air conversion in 2005, 11 cities moved up to BS III (from BS II) while the others followed suit with BS II from BS I. Incidentally, ‘BS’ is the Indian equivalent of the more commonly understood Euro emission norms used globally.

Oil industry sources told Business Line that there would be absolutely no problems concerning implementation of BS IV norms in 14 cities. “We are ready for it and there will be no issues concerning availability of cleaner diesel and petrol to these metros,” they said.

‘Logistical nightmare’

However, the glitch lies in BS III for the rest of the country. “This is turning out to be a logistical nightmare for the oil refiners. It looks as if availability and supplies to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and the North-East will not be possible from April 1 next year,” an executive said. Servicing parts of the South could also prove a challenge, he added.

This is largely because Indian Oil Corporation’s Barauni refinery will be hard-pressed to meet the needs of the entire UP and Bihar belt while BPCL’s Kochi Refineries, likewise, needs time to get additional infrastructure in place to supply clean fuels in the southern region. There is already a shortage of refining capacity in the North-East and to expect supplies to be in place from April 1 would be a tall order, sources said.

There are other problems to be reckoned with. The first lies in insufficient tankage capacity for the BS III fuels. Two, work needs to carried out on pipelines so that they are better suited to transport the new fuels which will be lower on sulphur content. “This is not the easiest of tasks and we need more time to carry out this exercise,” an oil industry executive said.

The present thinking is that implementation of BS III should ideally be extended to October 1, 2010 but whether that is possible remains to be seen because this is a Supreme Court directive.

Auto sector needs

The automobile industry has already indicated that it would require supplies of BS IV fuel by January 2010 to test it out in the vehicles that will comply with this norm three months later. Petroleum Ministry officials said some companies have been given no objection certificates to import the fuel for testing by companies, including Ford, Maruti, Hyundai, and Tata Motors.

The bigger problem will occur with the hiccups in BS III fuel availability especially with carmakers. They will now have to wait to see if there is an extension in the date and then plan their production accordingly to gradually phase out BS II models and increase the BS III numbers. This will not be easy because it will have to involve close coordination with testing agencies like the ARAI (Automotive Research Association of India).

Officials in the Petroleum Ministry reiterated that there would be no time lag in implementation of BS IV. “We will go by the policy. Upgradation of refineries is already on,” sources said

To ensure smooth distribution and work out the logistics issues, the Ministry has constituted a committee with representatives from oil refiners. “The idea is to ensure that there is no lag between production and distribution. Logistics is an issue. Concerns like from where the product will be sourced and where it would be exchanged need to be addressed,” an official said.