An increase in cooking gas consumption by households is something oil marketing companies are not ruling out, with the lockdown to contain spread of Covid-19 in place in Telangana.
While the lockdown is recent, wider and effective tool to ensure people stay put, the work from home option many IT workforce had gone with, seem to be igniting demand for more liquefied petroleum gas in kitchens.
The logic extended by distributors as well as officials in oil industry is simple, more people at home and reducing options of either eating out or ordering food is a recipe to prepare own food. Telangana LPG Distributor’s Association general secretary K. Jagan Mohan Reddy says a trend of enhanced LPG consumption is indicative over the last few days.
While senior officials of national oil marketing companies do not discount possibility of a spike, they would prefer to wait for the pattern to emerge stronger even while gearing up in anticipation.
“We are pushing stocks to our distributors” says R. Sravan S.Rao, Executive Director and State Head of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This is to ensure less backlog or the time taken to the supply. It currently is 1.3 days, he adds.
Though a significant increase in consumption is not evident now, even if there were to be one later, IOC is geared to handle the demand, he says.
A senior official of Bharat Petroleum Corporation said LPG offtake, either by way of customers ordering refills at shorter intervals or consuming more from the pipeline, an utility available at several gated communities, could not be ruled out when family members spend more time home. BPCL, he adds, is ready to meet such demand.
In Telangana, IOC, BPCL and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) cater to around 1.7 crore LPG households through over 700 distributors, who in turn have more than 10,000 delivery and auxiliary staff. About 1.8 lakh cylinders are supplied every day, Mr.Reddy says, requesting customers to opt for digital payment modes and minimise visits to LPG showrooms.
“We request the customers to show empathy towards our delivery force who are working under these dangerous conditions extending home delivery service,” he says, adding to ensure social distancing cylinders were being delivered at the main gate. Refills bookings on Monday were 20-25% higher, he says.
Preventive measures
As much as on the ability to scale up supplies, oil companies and distributors are focused on measures that help contain spread of the virus. From instructing delivery staff to maintain distance from customers and wear masks, the oil companies are also asking them to wipe shrouds of filled refills ahead of delivery as well as that of empty refills while accepting.
Explaining the procedure in place at bottling plants, the IOC and BPCL officials said as part of the cleaning as well as leak detection processes, the refills get a good water wash. Plans to add disinfectant in the water is under consideration.
