Auto Fuel Rationing in India
May 22nd, 2008Via: Time of India:
As crude oil prices keep soaring and the Centre refuses to bail out public sector oil marketing companies, which are under tremendous strain, the oil crisis has literally reached your neighbourhood gas station.
Vehicle owners can no longer be sure that petrol or diesel will be available on demand. Beginning Tuesday, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited has put its petrol pumps across the country on a “rationed” supply.
BPCL has adopted the drastic system because of a severe cash crunch for buying oil products.
Other oil majors like as HPCL and IOC too are facing a cash crunch given the government’s refusal to allow an increase in retail prices, which has been in the offing several times in the last few months.
Amarjit Singh, vice-president of the Petro Dealers’ Association in Mumbai, said that BPCL petrol-pump owners were informed on Tuesday that every dealer would receive only a limited quota every month.
“Every petrol dealer will receive petrol/diesel equivalent to the sale that was done in the same period last year. For instance, my pump sold around 80 kilolitres in May last year. I will receive a similar quantity or less this month,” he said.
In effect, this means that if a dealer exhausts his quota within, say, 25 days, due to the growing demand for petrol from the ever-growing automobile sector, he has to down the shutter for the remaining days of the month.
The company has told dealers that the move is only aimed at extending the available products for a longer duration.
A high-ranking BPCL official, requesting anonymity, confirmed that rationing has been done across the country and would, in effect, be initially for four to five months or less if the issue of payment is resolved earlier.
I went through the gas rationing scheme whilst living in Washington, D.C. in the early 70’s. It wasn’t a biggie for me as I drove a Volkswagen Beetle, and only infrequently took long trips in the car. But still I had to wait in line on days I was allowed to buy gas. The D.C. rationing scheme was based on the numbers on the license plate. And these were the days before there was a Metro. Ride the Bus!
Yes, and we know what happened to Nixon and Jimmy Carter.
We live in interesting times. It will be interesting to see how the eventual engineered energy scarcity effects suburbia in America. Gasoline in my part of the U.S. (western PA) is now at almost $4.00 for the lowest grade.
This is what we “get” for oil being paid for in U.S. dollars.
As Ben Bernanke takes the tiger out of the tank of the U.S. dollar, OPEC and the futures traders are going to get theirs by hook and crook, equivalent and up to what “they think a dollar should be worth.” I won’t be surprised by $7 or $8 per gallon, given how Bernanke is crushing the dollar.
I hope I’m not sounding smug. The cost of fuel among things, is a peripheral factor now. Other things will change my life. So I’m not crying, YET!
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/292