Gas shortage with rejected shipment, Quality Checks on-going

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a gas shortage, as samples from a shipment from the Maldives are being subject to tests.

It's been almost four days since Litro Gas suspended distributing gas to the country.

This has led to a situation where canteens and hotels will be unable to operate due to the shortage of domestic Liquid Petroleum (LP) gas.

A gas shipment from Bangladesh was earlier rejected by Sri Lanka as it did meet the required standards for ethyl mercaptan, and a total of 3,200 MT LP gas was refused entry to the country.

Another shipment of 2,000 MT from the Maldives is being subject to tests in Sri Lanka.

However, it is still uncertain when these tests results will be available and when gas will be distributed to the market.

In this backdrop, Sri Lanka’s Court of Appeal has ordered gas companies to ONLY distribute to the market, the gas cylinders that have been approved by the Sri Lanka Standards Institute.

Delivering an order on Friday (17), the Court of Appeal has also ordered gas companies to recall the gas cylinders that do not meet the SLSI standards but have been released to the market.

In addition, the gas companies were ordered by the Court to NOT charge consumers when replacing the recalled gas cylinders, with new ones that are approved by the Sri Lanka Standards Institute.

Despite assurances of safe gas cylinders, incidents of gas explosions are being reported daily from many areas in Sri Lanka.

The Chairmen of Litro Gas and Laugfs Gas, as well as the Director-General of the Industrial Technology Institute (ITI) and the Chairman of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, were summoned to the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission on Friday (17) over complaints made against unsafe gas being distributed to the market.