00:00Now, I've gone from availability to the affordability. The two points I make on affordability is that there was no
00:08increase in the price at the retail bank.
00:15Customers, it wasn't great, but the oil marketing companies were losing.
00:19Now, if the question is, when will you bring prices down? Well, as I said, now they are still carrying
00:25the stock which was bought at a higher price, with higher insurance, higher freight rates.
00:30if this persists next 2-3 months then that would be a legitimate question but you know that's
00:34hypothetical I won't get into that case now I come to what was our supply situation even at
00:42the most difficult point during that four month period we were always sufficiently stocked with
00:52supplies of petrol you know first crude oil diesel and LPG now this requires some perspective
01:10why were we able to do this I think two reasons one is that we had diversified our sources of
01:17supply and why still a large amount of LPG because LPG is only produced in very few refineries
01:26in the world one in countries around the Gulf and in the United States crude you can buy from
01:32elsewhere but LPG itself so there was a time when there was some concern that we may run short of
01:38LPG but even at the height of the crisis I don't think we were ever less than 45 days 46
01:45days Secretary
01:46correct me right and so that of course you had to take the daily brunt of questioning from our
01:52friends here so on an average even during difficult periods we had 60 days of crude 60 days of natural
01:59gas more than 16 of natural gas and 45 days of LPG when it comes to LPG let me tell
02:13you what the concern
02:15was concern was that if the Strait of Hormuz is being subjected to two blockades one by the United
02:23States the other by Iran then the vessels could not access the ports from where LPG shipments to India
02:32were to come so to begin with we had a very interesting situation we had something like 30 vessels many
02:40of
02:41some LPG carriers some of them LNG carriers not many and some of them crude carriers stuck in the
02:47Strait of Hormuz so full marks to my colleagues who petroleum natural gas ministry external affairs
02:54ministry shipping ministry our navy people our embassy in in Tehran other pieces on a daily basis they were
03:05lazing with the concerned authorities and one by one we got 12 I think LPG tankers out in the
03:12beginning but that by itself would not have helped no I'm not saying I'm not grateful to that but that
03:18would not have been sufficient I should choose my words carefully because our LPG consumption was
03:25something in the we're in the range of 80,000 metric tons per day and more so what did we
03:34do
03:35we reconfigured our refineries that's why I come back to saying that having a refinery capacity is a
03:41great boon because and we shifted some of our production away from pet chem petrochemicals to LPG
03:51so our domestic production of LPG was raised from 35,000 metric tons a day to 54,000 metric tons
04:02a day
04:04and for those of my colleagues are aware every day we used to be telling Sujata who's a joint
04:10secretary concerned talk to this refiner talk to that refiner I must say they all played ball
04:14so I want to use this opportunity also to express gratitude to all concerned both public
04:21sector and private sector and they ramped up their production
04:26having a refining capacity and having the ability to suddenly increase production and bringing it down
04:33because LPG production would not by definition be the first priority for a refinery they would rather go
04:40for petrochemicals and others which get more value but we demonstrated it can be done
04:46then we also embarked on a very major program to encourage our users of liquefied petroleum gas or
04:56cylinder gas as I call it to shift to other cooking media one is pipe natural gas how many people
05:05give up their connection so far one point three lakh customers have given up their connection
05:11shifted to pipe gas but that's a very small beginning in our system we want to ramp that up major
05:19process is going on we have the major trunk lines the major trunk line has gone up from 14,000
05:25kilometers to 50 25,000 kilometers will go up to 30 but we need the feeder connection you know so
05:32we need
05:32the infrastructure with plumbers etc let's work in progress by the time we meet next or the one
05:42after that I hope to be able to share a more robust and bigger figure on on on the conversion
06:02is
06:02is
06:03is
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