New Delhi, Dec 22 (IANS): Oil marketing companies kept the retail price of petrol and diesel static on Tuesday maintaining the wait and watch stance amid a firm global oil market.

Accordingly, the pump price of petrol remained at Rs 83.71 a litre and diesel Rs 73.87 a litre in Delhi on Tuesday. Across the country as well, the price of the two petroleum products remained unchanged.

OMCs have gone on a pause mode at a time when news of successful coronavirus vaccines and expectations of big pickup in demand had kept crude on the boil with prices breaching $50 a barrel mark.

However, the recent news on a new mutant strain of the virus has affected markets across the world and uncertainty over fresh lockdowns and demand squeeze had again brought crude prices below the $50 a barrel mark.

Petrol prices was very close to breaching the all time high level of Rs 84 a litre (reached on October 4, 2018) when it touched Rs 83.71 a litre on December 7. But the march has been halted ever since then with no price revision by the OMCs.

With Tuesday's pause, fuel prices have now increased on 15 of the past 33 days with petrol prices rising by Rs 2.65 per litre and diesel by 3.41 a litre.

Earlier, petrol prices had been static since September 22, and diesel rates had not changed since October 2. It started rising in November and again went for a pause since December 8.

Though retail pricing of petrol and diesel has been deregulated and oil marketing companies were following a daily price revision formula, the same was suspended for almost two months to prevent volatility in international oil markets from impacting fuel prices regularly during the pandemic.