Jayalalithaa brings fuel relief to Chennai
The fuel crisis in Chennai will ease right away, chief minister J. Jayalalithaa said Tuesday after a high-level review meeting and after arranging to quickly transport to filling stations the 67,000 kilolitres (KL) of diesel and petrol that reached the city port by three ships from Kochi during the day.
“I am happy to announce the petrol and diesel shortage will end today,” she said.
“Efforts are on to immediately transport the fuel to BPCL, IOC and HP outlets,” CM said, adding that urgent steps had been taken to bring 2,000 KL of diesel by road from Bengaluru.
Chennai requires 2,100 KL of petrol and 2,500 KL of diesel a day.
CM said oil companies had explained non-functioning of the Mangalore refinery for the past 10 days and non-arrival of diesel supplies to BPCL, besides a spurt in customer demand, had caused the crisis.
By late Tuesday evening, fuel tankers were seen heading to bunks in the city and suburbs. Queues of vehicles at filling stations grew shorter.
M. Kannan, president of Tamil Nadu Petroleum Dealers Association, said the situation would ease by Wednesday noon.
While a tanker carrying 26,000 KL of diesel that anchored at Chennai Port had already begun offloading, a second tanker carrying 7,800 KL of petrol and 18,000 KL of diesel was waiting in the outer anchorage to be berthed, state oil coordinator V.K. Jaychandran said.
While a third tanker carrying 6,000 KL of diesel would start discharging as soon as it gets a berth space, another with 7,000 KL of petrol and 17,000 KL of diesel was expected to reach Chennai shortly, he said.
Post new comment