India's energy and fertiliser situation were top concerns at a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday—said to be the third since the beginning of the war between Iran and US-Israel forces on February 28.
PM Modi reviewed India's progress in ensuring the uninterrupted supply and efficient distribution of crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and fertiliser across the country.
Senior ministers present at the meeting included Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Health Minister J.P. Nadda, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
This is said to be the third such meeting chaired by PM Modi after a Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting on March 1—the first emergency response meeting chaired to discuss the safety of Indians in the Middle East and the impact of the Hormuz Strait closure when the war had just begun—and a high-level March 9 meeting with top security and defence officials to review the progress of the Gulf crisis.
This comes a day after the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) announced that an additional 20 per cent of commercial LPG had been allocated across the country.
This move takes the total commercial LPG allocated for commercial purposes to 50 per cent, as the supply crisis remains a "concern", the MoPNG said in its latest statement on the LPG supply crisis.
Meanwhile, the Singapore-flagged Pyxis Pioneer, which reached the New Mangalore Port early on Sunday morning, became one of the latest LPG tankers to reach Indian shores, providing a major boost for the country's LPG reserves. This comes as the Centre confirmed that port operations are progressing routinely as well.
The Centre has also declared that crackdowns on black marketing of LPG cylinders is continuing, as panic buying eases.
The meeting also takes place amid disruptions to the fertiliser sector as urea plants have been operating at sharply reduced levels because the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) continues to be disrupted due to the chaos in the Gulf, which triggered force majeure declarations, a PTI report noted.
This, in turn, has led to state-run gas distributors such as GAIL (India) Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), to restrict supplies under RasGas contracts to fertiliser units across the country.
“Gas supplies have been curtailed to approximately 60-65 per cent of normal levels,” a senior industry official said in the report, adding that it had led to urea output at affected plants dropping by around 50 per cent.