E20 Petrol Passes Quality Test in 893 Samples Nationwide

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas answered a quality scare over blended petrol on 7 November 2026. Karnataka's Department of Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Legal Metrology had claimed that petrol at some retail outlets in the state carried ethanol of between 26 and 31 per cent, far above the permitted level. The ministry placed on record the testing done by the three public sector oil marketing companies, which found no such thing.

What the testing showed

Under the Quality Coordination Cell exercise run with the Centre for High Technology, 893 samples of E20 petrol were drawn from depots and retail outlets in 27 States and Union Territories and checked for ethanol content. Every one of them fell inside the permitted band of 19 to 21 per cent. The samples came from Indian Oil (330), Bharat Petroleum (280) and Hindustan Petroleum (283). In Karnataka itself, all 56 samples taken from different locations and from all three companies complied, with readings of 19 to 20 per cent and an average of 19.30 per cent.

The dispute over method

The companies questioned how the October 2026 samples were drawn and tested. The rules, set by the Motor Spirit and High Speed Diesel Order of 2005 under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, read with the Marketing Discipline Guidelines of 2024, require six one-litre samples, two of them given to the dealer, two kept by the company or department and two sent to a notified laboratory, with labels jointly signed. The companies say they were not present when the October samples were drawn, received no retention samples or outlet-wise laboratory reports, and that a third-party laboratory was used instead of a notified one. The certificates recorded only ethanol by gas chromatography, without naming the test method, the one-to-one dilution with oxygenate-free petrol or the reference material that IS 17021 requires. The reported densities of 0.742 to 0.749 g/cc were also lower than the 0.752 to 0.760 g/cc found in company tests, although ethanol is denser than petrol.

The blending programme in numbers

In ethanol supply year 2025-26, which closed on 31 October 2026, the public sector companies bought 1,089 crore litres of ethanol and blended 1,134 crore litres against petrol sales of about 5,673 crore litres, working towards the national target of 20 per cent blending.