The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Solidarity among oil marketing companies sees fuel crisis through

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Thursday, Jul 03, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Solidarity among oil marketing companies sees fuel crisis through

Special Correspondent

Situation is almost back to normal in Chennai, neighbourhood

— Photo: R.Ragu

ALL TOGETHER: IOC Executive Director (TN State office) V.K. Jayachandran (left), at a press meet in Chennai on Wednesday. (From right) HPCL Executive Director (Retail) S.P.Chaudhry, BPCL General Manager (Retail-South) N.S. Ramu and BPCL’s Executive Director (Retail) Sanjay Krishnamurti are in the picture.

CHENNAI: It was camaraderie among the national oil marketing companies, rarely witnessed over the past few years, which prompted the fuel crisis in Chennai and neighbourhood to blow over on Wednesday.

Apart from making arrangements to tide over the shortage, as a result of the delay in receipt of diesel supplies meant for Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, the companies also seem to have decided to roll back their decision on creating exclusive branded fuel outlets.

Indications of these were available at the joint press conference by senior officials of BPCL, Indian Oil Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd on Wednesday, convened to announce that normality was being restored in the supplies of petrol and diesel.

N. Srikumar, Executive Director (Corporate Communications, Branding and Planning) of IOC, said: “It was a critical situation … [but] we rallied around.”

Sanjay Krishnamurti, BPCL’s ED (Retail), added that the oil industry came together and the queues from the retail outlets, which resulted in traffic nightmare on the roads, have almost disappeared.

“There would not be any such worries in future,” he said, adding that Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd, part of IOC, “gave us huge support.”

A joint statement by the companies said the dip in the diesel inventory levels in “one of our terminals and the situation has been managed reasonably well by the industry with oil companies providing product assistance to each other.”

“Every effort has been made and is being made by us to bring in diesel stocks in to Chennai by various means. It included stock transfers from Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd to the terminals of oil companies, coastal movement from refineries in Kochi and Mangalore and the expected import parcel of diesel on Sunday from Taiwan. The import, scheduled to arrive of June 20, was expected only on Sunday.

On Wednesday, coastal vessel Sampoorna Swarjya carrying a diesel consignment from Kochi berthed at the Chennai port. Products from BPCL-Kochi Refinery is predominantly despatched to Tamil Nadu using the Cochin-Coimbatore-Karur pipeline, besides on rail wagons, tankers and coastal ships.

Sources in Kochi said the coastal route is taken when a significantly large quantity of the petroleum products have to be despatched.

On a monthly basis, the refinery despatches around 1 lakh tonnes of products to Tamil Nadu, mainly for distribution in Coimbatore and neighbouring districts by the companies. S.P. Chaudhry, Executive Director (Retail) of HPCL, said the companies took the inconvenience caused to the customers very seriously and addressed the crisis with the support of the State government.

The officials denied that the companies and their dealers were pushing the expensive branded fuels and not supply regular variety of petrol and diesel.

They, however, agreed that by pushing the branded fuels the companies got to reduce their losses. But “we are not making money on branded fuels,” added Mr. Srikumar.

Executive Director of IOC (TN State office) V.K. Jayachandran added that both regular and branded fuels would be made available at the outlets. General Manager (Retail-South) of BPCL N.S. Ramu and General Manager (South Zone) of HPCL R.Radhakrishnan also addressed the press meet.

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