by Pankaj Yadav
NEW DELHI, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Amid the ongoing Middle East conflict, long queues of people were witnessed in front of private Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) distribution agencies in various cities and towns across India on Friday, including the capital New Delhi.
There were reports of people facing difficulties in making online bookings for refilling domestic LPG cylinders.
In some cities, domestic LPG cylinders were being sold at much higher prices than the maximum retail price of 913 Indian Rupees (around 9.87 U.S. dollars) per cylinder. Many restaurants and hotels, particularly in the financial capital Mumbai, continued to face difficulty in getting commercial LPG cylinders.
A delivery boy at an LPG distribution agency in the Gurugram city of the northern state of Haryana told Xinhua that there was a waiting time of at least a week, in general, for delivering a domestic LPG cylinder to a household, as, according to him, there was seemingly a shortage of gas supplies from the companies' end.
Amid the uncertainty prevailing in the country over cooking-gas shortage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi intervened, saying that every effort was being made to ensure there was no black-marketing or hoarding of LPG cylinders.
Expressing concern over LPG shortage in the country, Joint Secretary (Marketing and Oil Refinery) in the federal Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Sujata Sharma, said, "Despite the situation, no dry out has been reported at any of our 25,000 distributors. I would like to appeal to all fellow citizens not to give credence to rumors and to refrain from engaging in panic buying."
She told the media on Friday that there was no shortage of Liquefied Natural Gas supplies. Appealing to the public at large to shift from LPG to Piped Natural Gas (PNG), she said there were nearly 6 million such households across the country who could easily shift to PNG.
As a backup plan in the event of acute LPG shortage, the federal government was also trying the emergency reintroduction of kerosene and coal as alternative fuels for cooking purposes.
Meanwhile, according to official sources, in a bid to meet the possible LPG shortage, domestic production had increased by 30 percent in the country, compared to last week. ■