India’s petroleum consumption fell for the first time in more than two decades in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and factories, hurting demand from one of the world’s largest users of the fuel. Total petroleum demand declined 10.8% last year from 2019, and was at a five-year low of 193.4 million tons, according to Bloomberg calculations of provisional data published by the oil ministry’s Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell . The annual contraction was the first on record, going back as far as 1999. Consumption of petroleum fuels by Asia’s second-biggest oil importer collapsed by as much as 70% after it embarked on one of the world’s most stringent nationwide quarantines in March. The drop resulted in a sharp cutback in crude processing and operations at petrochemical plants. The strict restrictions ravaged the Indian economy, which […]