The Hindu : New Delhi News : Dry petrol pumps leave vehicles thirsty

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Friday, Jan 09, 2009
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Dry petrol pumps leave vehicles thirsty

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

. – PHOTO: S. SUBRAMANIUM

DRY DAYS: Running out of stock, a petrol station in Delhi wears a deserted look on the second day of the oil sector officers’ strike. At other petrol pumps in the Capital and NCR, there were long queues

NEW DELHI: With the strike by the Oil Sector Officers’ Association entering its second day on Thursday, the impact was felt on the Capital’s roads as nearly 80 per cent of the petrol pumps of Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum went dry by the evening leading to widespread panic and long queues at the remaining fuel pumps.

At most of the filling stations that were still operating till Thursday evening, there were serpentine queues of vehicles extending to the roads outside. In Connaught Place, the only station operating till 7-30 p.m. was the one on the Barakhamba Road radial. Here, too, stocks were diminishing fast as all those in the queue demanded a “tank full”.

At many places, like the IBP filling station on National Highway-24 near Mayur Vihar Phase II, emergency service vehicles like ambulances waited for their turn in the long queues. Incidentally, ambulance services in Delhi are likely to be the worst hit by the crisis. Most of the hospitals running private ambulances do not stock oil for their fleets.

“We have over 20 ambulances but we do not keep oil reserves, but so far we have not faced a problem,” said an official at a private medical centre in Naraina Vihar.

As for the Delhi Fire Service, Chief Fire Officer R. C. Sharma said: “We have our own filling station and keep reserves for nearly 20 days.”

The Delhi Police also keep their own stock of fuel. “We are well stocked and have reserves for over a week,” said Joint Commissioner (Provisions and Lines) M. S. Sandhu.

A major saving grace for Delhi is that the entire public transport runs on eco-friendly compressed natural gas (CNG) whose supplies have not been hit.

With the Delhi Metro railway also carrying lakhs of passengers each day and many taxis also operating on CNG, the city has a cushion. But still, with over 40 lakh private and commercial diesel and petrol vehicles on the roads, anxiety among the commuters is running high.

People in the satellite townships of Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Gurgaon have been hit doubly hard as they are completely dependent on fossil fuels for transport.

Federation of All India Petroleum Traders’ secretary-general Ajay Bansal said the impact of the strike would be total by Friday when all the filling stations are expected to run out of their stocks.

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