New Delhi, May 22 (IANS): A day after the hike, oil marketing companies (OMCs) on Saturday kept pump price of petrol and diesel unchanged across the country, taking a pause with global oil which is showing signs of softening amidst the possibility of Iranian oil hitting the markets soon.

Accordingly, petrol continues to be priced at Friday's level of Rs 93.04 per litre and diesel Rs 83.80 per litre in Delhi.

Across the country as well the fuel prices remained static on Saturday but their retail prices varied depending on the level of local taxes.

The pause in prices has come after the repeated rise in fuel prices in May which has taken the retail price of petrol closer to a historic level of Rs 100 per litre in the city of Mumbai. The retail price of petrol has now reached Rs 99.32 per litre in the city.

Petrol prices are already over Rs 100 per litre in several cities in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Premium petrol has been hovering above that level for some time now.

In the month of May, fuel prices have increased on 11 days so far. This has taken up the price of petrol by Rs 2.49 a litre in Delhi. Similarly, diesel prices have risen by Rs 3.07 per litre in the capital this month.

Before Friday, OMC was revising fuel prices on every alternate day for the last one week rather than undertaking changes on a daily basis as has been the practice.

Under daily price revision, OMCs revise petrol and diesel prices every morning benchmarking retail fuel prices to a 15-day rolling average of global refined products' prices and dollar exchange rate. However, in a market where fuel prices need to be increased successively, alternate day price revision seems to be the flavour.

With global crude prices at around $66 a barrel mark (lower than $70 it touched last week), OMCs may keep a watch and spare consumers from any further increase in fuel prices for some time now.