The impact of the downpour the city and suburbs received in recent days on LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinder supplies was restricted to some pockets, but the rain is set to trigger the annual pattern of cooking gas consumption by households increasing a bit early.
An increase in refill bookings is being observed in recent days, Telangana LPG Distributor’s Association General Secretary K. Jagan Mohan Reddy said, attributing it to the rain. The monthly domestic LPG refill bookings, with the three public sector oil marketing companies together, in Telangana varies from around 47 to 51 lakh refills depending on the season.
As per early pointers for this month, the increase in refill bookings is 8-10% in the State, he said, adding it could be a temporary phenomenon. Apart from more time taken to cook, when day temperatures begin to drop, and the need to boil water for bathing, last week’s torrential rains is also bound to make it necessary for many households to boil water for consumption. On the rain impact on supplies, he said it was restricted to a few pockets primarily because of water logging in the areas where some of the LPG godowns were located. In turn, it marginally increased the wait time for households.
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Executive Director and State Head of Indian Oil Corporation for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh R.Sravan S.Rao said the rain impact on last-mile distribution was limited to a few pockets that were inundated. Stating that the bottling plants of IOC functioned as usual, the backlog in supplies (wait from the time of booking) to households in Telangana as on Wednesday was 1.57 days, while in Andhra Pradesh it was 1.39 days.
In places where roads were breached, IOC took cooking gas cylinders to nearby places from the customers could pick them up. Mr.Rao said there was neither need for customers to panic nor was there shortage of cylinders “as all our bottling plants are functioning to the normal capacity. We have surplus capacity and are geared to handle the [additional] demand” that sets in from the festive season. November, December and January are the peak consumption period.” As a gesture, IOC on Wednesday donated life jackets to police and food packets to residents of some waterlogged areas in old city.
A senior official of Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) said contributing to the higher consumption would be many families who got free cylinders as part of the COVID-19 relief package from the government and like to continue using LPG.
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