India will at some stage need to assess how long state-run fuel ​retailers can sustain losses from selling transport fuels below market prices, oil ‌minister Hardeep Singh Puri said at an industry event on Tuesday.

The minister on Tuesday indicated that fuel prices could rise, while dismissing suggestions that the government had postponed any price revision because of the recently concluded state elections.

“We’ve converted the challenge into an opportunity. We haven’t raised prices for the last four years. I’m not saying prices will not go up. I’m saying prices and elections are unrelated,” Puri said at the CII Annual Business Summit 2026.

India has crude and liquefied natural gas sufficient for 60 ​days, and liquefied petroleum gas for 45 days, he added.

Petrol and diesel spot prices have surged to multi-year highs globally as the West Asia conflict disrupted supply, but governments in several major ​economies have held down pump prices to shield consumers from inflation.

A joint secretary ​in the oil ministry, Sujata Sharma, had earlier said that India had no plans to compensate oil marketing companies for these losses. Fuel retailers are incurring losses ​of about ₹100 ($1.06) per litre on diesel and ₹20 per litre on ​petrol, Sharma said last month.

India is the world’s third-largest oil importer and consumer, meeting more than 90 per cent of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas demand through imports.

Indian state ​fuel retailers, including Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, which account for ​most of the fuel sales in the country, have not raised petrol and diesel prices since April ‌2022.

A senior government official separately told Reuters that compensating oil marketing companies while keeping fuel prices unchanged is not fiscally sustainable.

Another official said any price increase would be substantial enough to discourage spending on petrol and diesel, but not so large as to sharply ​stoke inflation.