Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on April 1, 2017 launched a supply of BS-IV grade fuel in 12 towns through video-conferencing.
This commences a new era of clean transportation fuels that would benefit 1.25 billion citizens of India by substantially reducing pollution levels.
Even though India is not a polluting country, it has shown commitment for reducing vehicular emission.
Oil companies were asked to expedite their efforts to introduce BS-VI standards by April1, 2020
The oil upgradation programme commenced in 1991.
Oil companies have achieved emission standards by continuously introducing advance technology and making huge capital expenditure.
The oil industry has spent over INR . 28,000 crore after 2010 for supplying BS-IV grade fuel. It was in addition to INR. 35,000 crore already spent before 2010.
Mr. Tripathi said oil companies would further spend INR 28,000 crore to supply BS-VI specification oil by 2020. As of now total investment made to upgrade oil comes to around INR 90,000 crore.
The Supreme Court has banned the sale of BS-III vehicles from April 1.
BS-VI: Know More- According to Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, India has reduced its diesel content from 10,000 ppm in the most of the country in 1996 to a maximum of 50 ppm in 2017.
The proposed BS-VI regulation will reduce diesel sulphur content to a maximum 10 ppm. - This will be enabling the introduction of advanced emission control technologies, including diesel particulate filters and selective catalyst reduction systems.
- This will be needed to meet BS-VI emission standards.
- As the technology for BS-V is not very different, it was decided to go straight to BS-VI grade fuels from BS-IV.
