Concerns over a potential cooking gas shortage spread across Delhi on Tuesday as LPG agencies reported a surge in calls and booking requests from worried consumers. This panic was after the central government decided to use the Essential Commodities Act to give priority to local supply of LPG due to the disruption caused by the growing conflict in West Asia. Although the officials have assured that there is no shortage in the supply of cylinders, retailers stated that most households are stocking up on cylinders in anticipation of shortage into the future. Gas distributors all over the city claimed that the number of inquiries had increased abnormally, as customers are requesting faster deliveries or attempting to reserve additional cylinders as emergency supplies.
LPG Prices And Gas Cylinder Shortage Update
To make the matter even more confusing, the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has just imposed a new rule where minimum space between bookings of domestic LPG cylinders must be 25 days instead of 21 days. Authorities claim that the action is used to circumvent panic buying, hoarding and black-market selling in a season of world supply insecurities. But distributors also complain that the rule has caused a temporary slowdown of deliveries. One of the representatives of Atul Enterprises in Janata Market near Jhandewalan Temple mentioned that their system was not able to produce booking slips of people who had placed their requests only a few days before. In the meantime, the lack of supply was being reported by some agencies in west Delhi on Tuesday. A distributor of Kirti Nagar claimed that they normally receive about 350 cylinders a day supply by a supplier in Haryana but did not get any new stock that day.
Delhi Consumers Rush To Book Cylinders After New 25-Day LPG Refill Rule Sparks Supply Concerns Amid West Asia Conflict
Business enterprises seem to be struggling even more. Others agencies reported that they ceased to supply cylinders to restaurants and other businesses according to government instructions which deemed domestic use first. Those restaurant owners are allowed to make calls to distributors in locations like Vikaspuri have claimed that they received calls in large numbers despite the restrictions. By the managers of some gas agencies, there have been numerous requests to provide more than 1 cylinder by the customers yet the requests are being rejected. Meanwhile, the news of black market sales has already appeared, and some smaller enterprises report that LPG cylinders that should cost about ₹1,100 are sold almost at 2000. Restaurant proprietors of places such as Connaught Place where piped gas connections are scarce, threatened this would soon impact on menu offerings should supplies continue to be tight.
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