The Hindu Business Line : No overall LPG shortage in the country, says Minister

The Minister of State for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Mr Dinsha Patel, told the Lok Sabha on Thursday that public sector oil companies exported 163 TMT (thousand tonnes) of petrol and 991 TMT of high-speed diesel during the first half of the current fiscal to Nepal, Sri Lanka, the UAE, Indonesia, Mauritius, Bangladesh and Yemen.

"In order to reduce the net oil import bill, efforts were made to maximise export of petroleum products. As per provisional figures, the net export of petroleum products in 2005-06 rose by 48 per cent in terms of quantity and 200 per cent in terms of value, compared to 2003-04, resulting in corresponding reduction in net oil import bill."

LPG supplies

In response to a query, Mr Patel said that currently there is no overall shortage of LPG in the country.

LPG supplies to distributors were being made by the public sector oil marketing companies through indigenous production and imports in accordance with the genuine demand of customers registered with the LPG distributors, he said.

However, the oil marketing companies have reported a backlog of 2-8 days in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu due to unplanned shutdown of refineries, transporters strike, bad road conditions and riots in Mangalore.

"No complaint has been received from the State Governments about any LPG crisis. The Government has advised oil marketing companies to liquidate the backlog in these States by operating bottling plants on holidays and during extended hours."

Various measures are being taken to substantially accelerate exploratory activities for enhancing domestic oil and gas production, Mr Patel said.

These include increasing exploration efforts through the New Exploration Licensing Policy and improving the recovery factor from existing major fields by implementing Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)/Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) schemes-in particular.

ONGC has taken up 15 fields for this purpose at an estimated investment of Rs 10,972 crore; this would also help in accelerating oil production from these fields.

Acquisition of overseas oil and gas reserves through equity or participating interest are some of the other measures being taken.