New Delhi, Feb. 11: Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) has received the government’s approval to set up 500 petrol pumps under its own name and logo. Petroleum minister Ram Naik has approved the proposal for allowing MRPL to sell petrol and diesel from its own filling stations with the stipulation that 11 per cent of these will be set up in remote areas.

The company, which has been taken over by upstream oil major ONGC, operates a 9.69 million-tonne refinery at Mangalore. Most of the petrol pumps will be set up in the southern and western states.

MRPL will put up 110 petrol pumps each in Karnataka and Maharashtra followed by 56 each in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. While 12 filling stations will be set up in Goa, the northern states of Rajasthan and Haryana will get 28 each. The company proposes to set up 22 petrol pumps in Rajasthan.

Mangalore Refinery will use the product exchange practice that is currently in place among public sector companies to supply its filling stations in the states that are closer to the refineries of other companies.

With this the authorisation for setting up new retail outlets for marketing petrol and diesel goes up to 11,569, which is 56 per cent of the existing 20,885 retail outlets in the country. The government had earlier granted marketing rights to Reliance to set up 5,849 filling stations, Shell India for 2,000 pumps, Essar Oil 1,700, ONGC 1,100 and Numaligarh Refinery 510 stations.