New Delhi, May 28 (IANS): The wait for the retail price of regular petrol in the city of Mumbai to cross Rs 100 a litre mark, its highest level ever, has got a bit longer with Oil marketing companies (OMCs) deciding to keep fuel prices unchanged on Friday.

But this wait has already ended for the city of Jaipur where with Thursday's fuel price hike, regular petrol is now being sold at Rs 100.17 per litre. Similar is the case with several towns and cities in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra including in Thane where petrol price has crossed the Rs 100 per litre much before Thursday's price rise.

With no change in prices on Friday, the pump price of petrol in Mumbai continues to remain at Rs 99.94 a litre. Similarly, diesel prices in the city are also static at Rs 91.87 a litre, the highest among all four major metro cities in the country.

In Delhi also, petrol and diesel are priced at previous days level of Rs 93.68 and Rs 84.61 a litre, respectively.

Premium petrol prices have already crossed the Rs 100 per litre mark in the city and other parts of the country through an increase in the retail rates in the month of January and February.

Friday's pause in price revision came after OMCs raised fuel prices by 25-30 paise a litre kept on the previous day. The oil companies have been following this trend for the past couple of weeks when fuel prices are raised on few days and kept unchanged on others.

Fuel prices have now increased and remained unchanged on 14 days each respectively so far in the month of May. The 14 increases in May has taken up petrol prices by Rs 3.28 per litre in Delhi. Similarly, diesel price has increased by Rs 3.88 per litre in the national capital.

Under the daily price revision, the 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, oil companies this month have been holding back price rise on few days before starting the process all over again.

Earlier, IANS had reported that OMCs may begin increasing the retail price of petrol and diesel post-state elections as they were incurring losses to the tune of Rs 2-3 per litre by holding the price line despite higher global crude and product prices.

With global crude prices rising again to around $70 a barrel mark, OMCs may have to keep revising prices upwards for some more time.