How to Deal with high oil prices ?

We are very much familiar with the way oil prices are soaring these days. Central as well as State govt. levy taxes on petroleum products due to certain reasons.

1.  Oil is non-renewable source of energy and what we consume is gone forever. In addition to it, there is an increment in consumption : production ratio. More of demand of any commodity leads to increment in the costs.

2.  More usage of private vehicles and avoiding public transport leads to more traffic. This leads to more demand and hence rise in the prices, as well as increase in pollution level of any particular area.

3.  There are very limited sources of oil in India and hence, we have to import most of it which ultimately affects the prices as we have to pay for buying, import as well as transport between two nations. This is surely not an easy or cheap task to handle.

4.  Rise and fall in currency also leads to varying exchange rates which increases the import cost and ultimately increase in cost of commodity (here petroleum products).

 There are several measures which need to be taken in order to control price hike of petrol :

1.  India being a tropical country is blessed with ample sunlight and rainfall in different regions. Measures should be taken to utilize full geographical benifits. Wind energy power station plants must be developed on western and eastern ghats, vindhyachals and aravali. The central part of India is well exposed to heavy sunlight hence solar energy power stations must be setup in these zones.

2.  We have good network of rivers and dams hence hydroelectric power stations can be set up in various river basins. Being an agricultural based economy, we have lots of crop waste which can be used for biomass production. Though it is true that we cannot replace petrol completely but efforts must be taken to minimize its utilization which would ultimately result in reducing pricehikes of petrol.

3.  Merging with major Oil Corporations and explore more sources of Oil within the country so that we have to import less. Also exploration of alternatives like CNG will reduce the consumption of petroleum products.

4.  Its not correct to blame govt. for everything and put all the burden on them. We must make more use of public transport and cycles, rather than kicking a bike. An evening walk or cycling would be much better for health.


Lastly, we need to understand that we can only continue with limited resources for limited time. So, we certainly need to find alternate sources and our engineers are already working on new and better alternatives for petroleum products.

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