New Delhi. India has become the third largest fuel retail market in the world. According to the report of Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, by the end of November the number of petrol pumps in the country has reached 1,00,266.
India is now behind America and China in terms of petrol pump network. To meet the increasing demand on highways and in rural areas, government and private companies have almost doubled their network in the last decade. America has the largest petrol pump network in the world. There is no official data available about the number of petrol pumps in America but according to a report of 2024, the number of retail petrol pumps in the country was 1,96,643. Some pumps may have been closed since then. At the same time, in a report last year, the number of petrol pumps in China was stated to be 1,15,228. Chinese company China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) is the largest retailer there with more than 30,000 pumps, but India’s IOC network (41,664 pumps) is even bigger than Sinopec.
Number of petrol pumps doubled in 10 years
The network of petrol pumps in the country has expanded very rapidly. In the year 2015, there were a total of 50,451 petrol pumps in India, which has now increased to more than 1 lakh by the end of 2025. Along with government companies, private companies have also increased their share in this expansion. The market share of private companies was only 5.9 percent in 2015, which has now increased to 9.3 percent. The Indian fuel market is dominated by an umbrella of public sector companies. Government companies like Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum own more than 90 percent of the petrol pumps in the country. According to data, Indian Oil is the largest company in the country with 41,664 petrol pumps. After this, 24,605 stations of BPCL and 24,418 stations of HPCL are present across the country.