Cloud Application for Managing Retail Gas Stations - Introduction to Formation of National Oil Energy Grid

This paper is about developing a framework using Cloud Computing technique integrating the operations of retail gas stations. Indias dependence on oil imports is very significant with almost 70 % crude getting imported. While the crude oil supplies to refinery and the petroleum products from refinery depot and depot to retail stations is tracked well, it is always difficult to ascertain what goes on in the retail gas station itself and the manner in which the products are dispensed. Moreover, energy availability through hydrocarbon based fuel is fairly limited, the retail gas stations, which are at the end of the supply chain need also to be regulated some day in future. Thankfully, we today have a technologies such as cloud computing which can be leveraged to first of all manage entire operations of retail gas stations and in turn monitor the way the fuel is dispensed to the vehicles. The framework of cloud based applications have multiple advantages to all the stakeholders at large and this paper attempts to identify those benefits. The framework also identities broad level functionalities that can be built into the overall framework. Cloud applications are capable of tracking the transactions being processed such as dispensing to vehicles, but also manage other functions such as back office management, maintenance, HR and other features which are essential for running the retail gas station and adding revenue streams.