Every possible strategy to reduce oil consumption while maintaining living standards, productivity, and economic growth without hurting consumers and saving substantial revenue and underlying supply threats, has been the order of the day by economist in various developed and developing countries. India itself is spending approximately 100 billion dollars per annum on crude imports.
US President Barack Obama said his administration is looking at whether it would be possible to ease both international and US supply bottlenecks as an immediate response to rising gasoline prices. Every possible strategy and experiments to efficiently increase production and tackle bottlenecks in refineries to enhance distillation is being considered world over. Efforts are on to tap every possible natural reserves within the country to maximize output.
In India, Reliance Industries Ltd., Mumbai, has blamed “reservoir complexity and natural decline in reserves” for disappointing production of crude oil and natural gas from the KG D6 block, which has yielded a series of large discoveries in deep water offshore eastern India.
Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., India’s largest refinery and oil products retailer, renewed an agreement for supply of 2 million tones per year of diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and ATF from privately owned Essar Oil Ltd, in the current year. They have also been speeding up for completion of project slated for three lakhs barrels per day producing refinery to be operated at Paradip, Orissa, on India’s eastern coast.
GAIL (India) Ltd. signed a $153 million contract with Punj Lloyd Ltd. for laying its 1,400-km Dabhol-Bangalore Pipeline project, describing the agreement as part of its commitment to bring natural gas supplies to Karnataka by 2012.
Meanwhile, constraints in supply of LPG cylinders is being faced by housewives in view of the ongoing stir by tank operators wherein nearly 3500 tank lorries are off the road. They are demanding implementation of new transport contract which is pending since last five to six months, and incurring of heavy losses.Transporters are demanding better contract rates for plying their tank lorries considering stringent quality and operational checks, police verified drivers.