Gasoline drought affects Denpasar

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)