LPG supply strikingly hit
Chennai   21-Oct-2011

A strike by drivers of trucks, which transport Indane cylinders from the IOTL bottling plant to various distributors across the city, has resulted in stoppage of LPG despatches from the facility in suburban Manali.

A communication from IndianOil on Thursday said it was a “flash strike” by the drivers and talks were under way in the presence of government officials to resolve the issue and resume the LPG filling and despatches. IOTL (Indian Oil Tanking Ltd) is a group company of IOC.

According to the release, a major portion of LPG supplies to the city are met from IOC's Ennore and Chengalpet bottling plants, “which are working to their full capacity and every effort is being made to supplement the supplies.”

Normality in LPG despatches from the IOTL plant is expected soon and Indane customers in the city are requested not to resort to panic booking of refills.

The disruption in supplies from the Manali plant, which caters for nearly 50 Indane distributors in Chennai and its suburbs, is bound to increase the backlog of refill cylinder supplies to be made. There are about 110 Indane distributors and they cater for around 18 lakh customers in and around the city, sources among distributors said.

It has been four days since they received loads from the IOTL plant, they added. Though loads were being diverted from Ennore plant, these were not enough to meet the demand.

The consumption of LPG, both by households and commercial establishments, goes up during the festival season and north-east monsoon. Supplying loads from other plants is likely to affect distributors attached to those facilities.

President (Chennai Area) of the All India Indane Distributors Association A. Ramachandran said the customer calls have gone up owing to increased use during the festival season and the backlog is piling up.
Backlog

Another distributor said the backlog of refill supplies at each Indane agency in the city is over 5,000. Some were even delivering cylinders for bills generated on October 4, said the distributor, who did not want to be named.

Sources in IOC said that it was meaningless to fill cylinders when they could not be evacuated from the bottling plant. Around 20,000 cylinders are bottled daily at the IOTL plant.

On Wednesday, a senior official in the LPG Department of the company maintained that the strike had been withdrawn following talks and the plant did not function, only for two days, including one in view of holiday for local body election.

As more people in the supply chain would go on leave for Deepavali, the situation is only bound to worsen, according to sources in IOC and among distributors.

The distributors said that a lot would also depend on the condition of the road linking Ennore and Manali during the monsoon as in the past LPG cylinder supplies were severely hit after the stretch was damaged in the rain.

Diversion not possible

They added that diverting supplies beyond a point from the Chengalpet plant is not possible as the facility caters for distributors in Kancheepuram and Vellore.