Monday, October 10 2005 20:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar today (Oct 10, 2005) set up a high level task force to monitor the supply of domestic cooking gas (LPG) even as public sector oil firms cleared most of the backlog to restore normal supplies.

"I have set up a task force headed by M S Srinivasan, Special Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, to monitor on daily basis the LPG (supply) situation," he told reporters here.

The task force will report on a daily basis to the Minister on the progress made in normalizing supply of subsidized LPG to domestic households, which had been severely affected due to shutting down of the LPG manufacturing unit of Reliance Industries's Jamnagar refinery, which is India's largest LPG producer.

"I have just been informed that Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has liquidated all the two-day backlog," he said, adding, Indian Oil Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd had gone into an overdrive to clear the waiting list.

"The Petroleum Minister had last week promised to wipe out all the waiting list by today but it seems supply constraints continued in some pockets."

Public sector refiners have been asked to import 0.2 million tonnes of additional LPG to meet the festive season demand.

Aiyar has also ordered intensive inspections to detect diversion of domestic LPG for commercial purposes and asked firms to concentrate on distributors showing abnormal growth in sale and take action against them if such growth was on account of diversions.