Hoshiarpur/Ambala, March 10 With the escalating conflict in West Asia disrupting energy supplies, many hotels, restaurants, and dhabas in Punjab and Haryana claimed on Tuesday that they were facing hardship due to a shortage of commercial LPG cylinders.
Harjeet Cheema, owner of a gas agency in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, said there was a significant shortage of commercial cylinders as refilled cylinders were not arriving from the bottling plants.
"If cylinders are not refilled and supplied from the bottling plants, it becomes difficult for us to provide them to customers," Cheema said.
He also said the price of a commercial LPG cylinder in Hoshiarpur currently stood at Rs 1,980.50.
Earlier, some relief in price was offered to customers at the agency level whenever possible, but the current shortage has made that difficult, Cheema claimed.
With the expanding conflict between Iran and the US-Israel combine disrupting global fuel lifelines, including India's LPG supplies, the government has prioritized domestic cooking gas supply to households, leading to a supply crunch for hotels and restaurants, which use commercial LPG.
In Haryana's Ambala, a supply crunch of commercial LPG cylinders impacted some hotels and dhabas, with many claiming that their stock was over.
Some restaurant owners said they will have to offer limited services if the situation continues for the next few days.
The distributors of various LPG companies did not supply commercial cylinders to their clients for the last three days, they claimed.
Arun, a manager with a gas agency in Ambala, said, “The shortage has prompted us to stop the supply of commercial cylinders.”
Sagar, a dhaba owner, said that due to the shortage, he has decided to shut his eatery for the next few days.
In Punjab, some hotel owners also feared that if the shortage of commercial cylinders continued, it could impact the wedding season as people have booked hotels, marriage palaces and resorts for various functions connected to the wedding ceremonies.
Megha Ohri, a gas agency owner in Hoshiarpur, said the situation is expected to improve once the supply from the bottling plants resumes.
“As soon as the supply from the bottling plant gets restored, cylinders will be supplied to the consumers,” she said.
Sanjiv Saini, a restaurant owner, and Pradeep Sood, who runs a dhaba, said the shortage created serious operational difficulties for their businesses.
They claimed the cylinders were available only at the full market price of Rs 1,980, without the discounts or concessions that were available earlier.
Saini said that besides running an eatery, he was also into catering work, and the shortage made it difficult for him to meet the demand.
They also said that they were exploring alternative options to run their kitchens, but warned that if the shortage continued, they may revert to traditional cooking methods using wood-fired stoves, though firewood was also expensive and not easily available.
Long queues at the distribution centres were witnessed at many places in the two states, even for domestic cylinders, with many saying the demand for gas cylinders had gone up sharply in the past few days.
Following the US-Israeli strikes inside Iran and Tehran's sweeping retaliation across the region, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has sharply declined.
The artery is the conduit for the supply of most of India's gas imports, in the form of LNG as well as LPG.