All retail outlets of Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) across mainland India that sell petrol are now dispensing E20 petrol, marking a major move toward cleaner fuel adoption and reduced reliance on fossil fuels.
Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Suresh Gopi, shared this update in the Rajya Sabha, confirming that every retail outlet of public sector OMCs with petrol facilities supplies E20 petrol.
The government has actively promoted ethanol blending in petrol through the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme, under which public sector OMCs sell petrol mixed with ethanol.
Since 2014, multiple initiatives have been undertaken to boost ethanol production in India. These include expanding the variety of feedstocks for ethanol, implementing an administered price mechanism for ethanol procurement under the EBP Programme, reducing GST on ethanol to 5%, launching Ethanol Interest Subvention Schemes (EISS) between 2018 and 2022, and creating a special subvention scheme for cooperative sugar mills to convert existing distilleries into multi-feedstock ethanol plants. Additionally, Long Term Offtake Agreements (LTOAs) between OMCs and dedicated ethanol plants, enhanced multimodal ethanol transportation, increased storage capacity, and improved infrastructure for handling higher ethanol blends have all contributed to this growth.
India’s OMCs reached the target of 10% ethanol blending in petrol by June 2022—five months ahead of schedule during the Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2021-22. The blending percentage increased to 12.06% in ESY 2022-23 and further to 14.60% in ESY 2023-24. For the ongoing ESY 2024-25, ethanol blending has already risen to 18.93% as of June 30, 2025, with a peak of 19.92% achieved in June itself.
