The Hindu Business Line : Cooking gas crisis will ease soon: Deora

New Delhi, Feb. 6 To ease the shortage of domestic cooking gas in the market, the Government has asked public sector oil companies to increase supply.

“We are taking all steps and you will see the situation will ease soon,” said Mr Murli Deora, Petroleum Minister.

The Petroleum Ministry is hopeful of overcoming the current crisis over cooking gas (liquefied petroleum gas) supply in the next two to three weeks.

The Petroleum Secretary, Mr M.S. Srinivasan, said, “The extended winter and the pricing issue has resulted in some supply problem. We will overcome it.”

Speaking to presspersons on the sidelines of an energy conference, he said that the PSU oil companies have been asked to increase production and imports of liquefied petroleum gas in order to meet the higher demand.

Gas refills

Panic booking for gas refills following reports of a proposed hike in cooking gas prices and also due to extended winter (the fuel was being used for heating purposes) led to the shortage.

The shortages were reported from parts of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, Kerala and Karnataka.

To check diversion of subsidised domestic cooking gas, the Government had introduced a system of providing refills to a household once in 21 days.

Requests for refills are accepted only after 21 days from the previous delivery.

Oil companies are producing 11-12 per cent more liquefied petroleum gas, and imports are also likely to cross 2.25 million tonne this fiscal (April-March) against 1.92 mt last year, Mr Srinivasan said.

Looking at the demand-supply mismatch, oil companies have imported five extra cargoes during the past two months.

Liquefied petroleum gas consumption during April-December was up 10.2 per cent to 8.75 mt compared with the corresponding period in the previous year.

Imports during the first nine months of the current financial year also went up shot up by 20.4 per cent to 1.985 mt.

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