Gasoline drought affects Denpasar

DENPASAR, Bali: Gasoline supplies here returned to normal on Monday afternoon after two days of scarcity due to delivery problems.

Most of the gas stations situated on the city's main streets were forced to cut their services over the last couple of days. Many consumers turned to the more expensive type of gasoline popularly called premix.

A gas station attendant on Jl. Teuku Umar said each station was allotted eight tons of gasoline a day, only one third of the normal supply.

To make matter worse, the gas stations could not fulfill the quickly rising demand for premix. Some of them had ran out of premix by Saturday night.

Head of the state-owned oil company Pertamina office here, Agus Nugroho, said the problem had arisen since the company had moved the gas reservoir from Sanggaran, some 15 kilometers away from here, to Manggis in Karangasem, around 70 kilometers east of here.

"Our supply in Sanggaran had decreased, so we moved the delivery point to Manggis. It takes a tanker five or six more hours to transport the gas to the stations," Agus said on Sunday.

He called on people on the island not to worry about gasoline supplies. The supply in the two gasoline reservoirs was 5,350 tons and will be increased to 6,500 tons. Gas consumption here is estimated at 900 tons per day. (zen)