Cooking becoming a burning issue

KOCHI: Signalling a severe shortage of cooking gas in the coming days, the operations of the Indian Oil Corporation’s bottling plant at Udayamperoor was closed down on Monday following tanker lorry strike.   Kochi has majority of its customers using LPG cylinders from the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). With tanker lorry strike underway in the past couple of days, the operations   of the bottling plant were under threat.   However, the plant was being run for the past few days using the supply from the Kochi refinery. The crisis at the bottling unit will affect six districts in the state as the Udayamperoor plant caters to the needsof customers in neighbouring districts like Idukki, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Thrissur and Malappuram. About 140 loads of LPG are being transported to these districts a day. As many as 60 trucks with LPG cylinders left the plant on Monday.  The Udayamperoor bottling plant gets LPG supply from Mangalapuram and Kochi Refinery. “Each bulk load carries 18 tonnes of LPG which when bottled at the plant will be enough for four trucks. For the past couple of days, there is no LPG  transportation from Mangalapuram. The supply from the BPCL Kochi Refineries is  also very limited. Of the three plants, two have not been operational owing   to the transporters’ strike. The third one, which was running till today,   was also affected on Monday,” said an employee at IOC plant.On Monday, the plant began its operations from morning using the three loads of stock from the Kochi Refinery. With the stock running out by afternoon, the operations were affected by 1.30 p.m. It is estimated that about 18,000 cylinders left the plant on Monday. One truck load of LPG will have different combinations of domestic and commercial cylinders. The different combinations of truck load are as  follows - 306 domestic cylinders, 288 domestic and 12 commercial cylinders, 270 domestic and 24 commercial, 252 domestic and 36 commercial, 216 domestic and 60 commercial, 192 domestic and 96 commercial cylinders.  The tanker lorry drivers from Tamil Nadu had launched the strike. Increasing the rent and allowing more number of tankers are the main demands. However, the IOC officials said that the rent demanded by the drivers was almost double the existing one.