The most expensive input on your site is sitting in a corner, in a barrel 

India tracks the cost of its infrastructure projects to the crore. It does not track the fuel that builds them.

 Ask a project manager what a kilometre of road costs and the answer is precise. Ask how many litres went into which machine last week and the answer is a logbook, a supervisor's memory, and a shrug.

The fuel nobody measures

The last comprehensive government study of where India's diesel goes was conducted by Nielsen for the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell. It placed construction, crushers, boring and drilling together at 6.45 per cent of national diesel consumption, with gensets accounting for a further 4.06 per cent. 

A more recent PPAC study, carried out by CRISIL across 2020 and 2021, found transport accounting for 87.3 per cent of diesel. But the fine print matters. That study measured retail sales, meaning fuel bought through petrol pumps. Bulk consumers who take delivery directly sit largely outside it. 

This is worth sitting with. The sectors that consume diesel in the largest single doses are the ones least visible in national data. If the country struggles to see it, a project office has no chance. 

Where it actually goes

Walk any site and the pattern repeats. Fuel is kept in the furthest corner, the one nobody is responsible for. Barrels, jerry cans, buckets, the occasional day tank. The ground there is permanently dark, not from one spill but from a thousand. 

Procurement means sending a vehicle to the nearest pump, usually the one offering credit rather than the one closest. For a business that moves from site to site, that dead mileage compounds every week. Fuel is burnt to fetch fuel. 

Dispensing means a hand pump, a jar, and a walk to the machine. An excavator needing 200 litres receives it 20 litres at a time, standing idle throughout. 

Theft is not exotic either. A tube into a transfer pipe is enough. Diesel is liquid gold: high value, no documentation needed to resell, and a ready market at every gate. It takes no skill to move and carries almost no risk. 

The delay nobody blames on fuel

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation monitors every central sector project above 150 crore rupees. Its May 2024 flash report covered 1,817 ongoing projects. Of those, 831 were running behind their original schedule, an average time overrun of 35.1 months. Cost overruns against original sanctioned cost stood at 5.71 lakh crore rupees, or 20.7 per cent. 

The official reasons listed are land acquisition, environmental clearance, financing, contracts, manpower and litigation. Fuel appears nowhere on that list. 

Yet every hour a machine waits for a jar is an hour of programme lost. And adulterated fuel quietly shortens the life of the very asset meant to see the project through, a cost that surfaces months later as maintenance nobody budgeted for. 

This is unorganised fuelling

It is not a scandal. It is a habit. Fuel is bought where credit is easiest, stored where nobody looks, moved by hand, recorded on paper, and reconciled at month end if at all. 

Every step is reasonable on its own. Together they add up to the largest unmanaged cost on an Indian construction site. 

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Sources

• Press Information Bureau, Government of India. Sector-wise consumption of petrol and diesel, based on the PPAC study conducted by Nielsen (India) Pvt Ltd. 

• Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell. All-India Study on Sectoral Demand for Petrol and Diesel, conducted by CRISIL Risk and Infrastructure Solutions, October 2020 to September 2021. 

• Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Flash Report on Central Sector Projects costing 150 crore rupees and above, May 2024.