Vijayawada: The woes of motorists continue as the petrol and diesel bunks abruptly stop suppy citing a shortage across Andhra Pradesh.
Motorists were seen waiting in long-queues at fuel stations here on Monday. Some fuel stations were having stocks of petrol while diesel has become scarce in many stations.
Despite the fall in the supply of fuels and panic- buying in the last few days, the BPCL and IOCL did not dispatch stocks from their oil depots to the fuel stations on Sunday. This worsened the scenario at fuel stations by Monday morning.
This raised the number of dry fuel stations from over 500 on Sunday to 700 by evening on Monday.
With the intervention of chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, who held talks with representatives of oil marketing firms and other stakeholders in the last three days, the OMCs have started to dispatch fuel tankers from their oil depots from 5am on Monday. They were expected to continue delivering fuel to the bunks through the night.
By Tuesday morning, the situation could ease at most fuel stations.
AP oil industry general manager Bhaskar Reddy said, "The OMCs have enhanced supply to the fuel stations two or three fold to ease the fuel crisis. They used to supply 6,000kl of petrol and 9,000kl of diesel on an average per day. We expect normalcy to be restored soon."
Meanwhile, the civil supplies authorities have been monitoring the stock positions at the fuel stations. With motorists doing panic buying of fuels, whatever the quantity supplied at the fuel stations started getting exhausted in four to five hours, turning the fuel stations dry again.
Civil Supplies director Ajay Kumar said, "With enhanced supply of fuels from Monday morning to the fuel stations, we are expecting the severity of the fuel crisis to come down across the state."
Moreover, to check diversion of diesel from the retail sale for agriculture and aquaculture sectors, the authorities wold be issuing authorisation vouchers to such farmers, by also involving the concerned village agriculture/fisheries assistants.
Details of such farmers' land holdings have to be submitted, so that the vouchers would be issued. This would hep them run their harvesters and aerators respectively.