Belagavi: A severe fuel crisis across north-Karnataka has crippled life as people are struggling to get even a litre of petrol and diesel after waiting in long queues for four to five hours for the last one week.
The situation turned worse after the fire mishap at the fuel storage depot of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) at Desur, near Belagavi. More than 1.20 lakh litres of petrol was lost in the fire mishap caused due to the burning of two petrol tank wagons when petrol was being unloaded at the depot from rail wagons in January.
The petroleum oil storage units at Desur also store oil supplied by different oil companies including Indian Oil Corporation Limited and BPCL and the fuel is unloaded from the rail wagons at the depot regularly. Since the fire broke out and destroyed a major part of the depot, HPCL is reconstructing it but is yet to complete work.
According to officials of HPCL and IOCL who held a meeting with Belagavi MP, Suresh Angadi over the prevailing fuel crisis in north-Karnataka, the crisis is the result of a fire mishap at Desur depot. They said the crisis will continue for some more days.
According to them the oil companies may make diesel available in sufficient amount within the next two days but people may face petrol problems for at least a week.
Sources said, a limited quantity of petrol and diesel is being supplied to a select few petrol pumps in Hubli-Dharwad, Belagavi, Bagalkot and Vijayapur everyday for the past one week and people have no choice but to wait in long queues half-a-day to fetch fuel. Of the 40 petrol pumps in Belagavi city, a limited quantity of petrol is available in only four to five pumps.
On Monday and Tuesday, the few petrol pumps which made petrol available to customers in Belagavi and Dharwad, gave merely one to two litres to each customer.
