Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan has denied reports that the oil companies have been asked to absorb the spike in crude oil prices. He said, "no directives have been issued to oil companies." He stressed that public sector oil marketing companies were free to fix the price of auto fuels in the country. Shares of PSU oil companies had plunged on speculative reports that oil companies, including Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, will have to bear a loss of up to Rs. 1 per liter on the sale of diesel and petrol after an informal government directive. Even tough PSU chiefs had denied that they had received any such directive from the government, IOCL's share was down 5.16 percent, HPCL was down 6.63 percent, while BPCL closed 4.49 percent lower during intra-day trade on Wednesday. The shares recovered marginally on Thursday after Pradhan's clarification. On April 12, petrol price in Delhi stood at Rs. 73.94 per liter while the price of diesel was at Rs. 64.93 a liter. The prices have risen slowly but steadily since mid-June last year when oil companies started implementing a daily revision of fuel prices. This is in line with the rise in crude oil prices. The Indian Basket of crude oil has risen from $46.56 a barrel in June 2017 to $63.80 a barrel in March 2018.