NEW DELHI: The government on Monday said it was now delivering more domestic LPG cylinders, meeting current demand as well as clearing backlog, indicating that panic buying had eased and availability of cooking gas had improved since March.Petroleum ministry’s joint secretary Sujata Sharma said the delivery time for cooking gas cylinders from the date of booking had also improved.“Our (LPG cylinder) supplies have exceeded bookings over the past few days. Efforts have been to bring bookings and deliveries back to normal,” Sharma said, adding that oil marketing companies were clearing backlog. LPG production at refineries had been ramped up to around 50,000 tonnes per day to support domestic availability, she said.While a little less than 1.7 crore refills were booked over the last four days, Sharma said gas distributors managed to supply six lakh more cylinders. She added that before the conflict, the delivery time for a refill from the date of booking was two days, which increased to over five days during the peak of the West Asia conflict in March.“The backlog has been decreasing steadily and the delivery time has now come down to 4.5 days. The effort is to deliver more refills than are booked,” she said.Govt on Monday issued a notification allowing LPG customers to either surrender their gas cylinder connection within 30 days of obtaining a PNG connection or get a transfer voucher from the distributor to restore their connection in a non-PNG area in future, if required. This may benefit consumers having transferable jobs, migrant households, tenants, students and families shifting to non-PNG areas.On shortages being reported at some retail pumps, Sharma said there was no shortage of fuel and both govt and oil retailers were monitoring the situation closely. “All retail outlets are being closely monitored at the level of oil marketing companies and the petroleum ministry. Any intermittent dryouts are being addressed immediately, and stocks are being replenished at all retail outlets,” she said.The official said panic buying was observed at petrol pumps in parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, resulting in a 20-30% surge in demand due to multiple factors, including increased agricultural consumption, bulk users buying from retail outlets because of the price difference, and consumers of private pumps shifting to state-owned oil retailers.The ministry said the panic buying was driven partly by higher agricultural demand, bulk purchases, and consumers shifting from private fuel retailers to state-run outlets due to price differences.
