NEW DELHI: India’s overall petroleum demand in 2020 fell for the first time in more than two decades as the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered businesses and factories, crimping the appetite of one of the world’s biggest consumers.
Demand for total petroleum products – including diesel, gasoline and jet fuel – slid 10.8% from a year earlier, the first annual contraction in data going back to 1999, according to Bloomberg calculations of provisional figures published by the oil ministry’s Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell. Consumption was also at a five-year low of 193.4 million tonnes.