Mumbai, Mar 20 (PTI) Maharashtra minister Pratap Sarnaik on Friday said the state road transport body is currently not facing any issue in terms of diesel availability to run buses despite the conflict in West Asia, and added that its fuel supply will remain steady for the next two months.

He, however, noted that the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) does not have any plan B ready to tackle the situation in case the fuel supply stops.

Talking to PTI Videos, Transport Minister Sarnaik said, "Due to the gas (LPG) crunch, many of our restaurants have shut their operations, and many more are staring at closures. The ongoing war will certainly pose some difficulties before us." Talking about the fuel supply situation in the MSRTC, which runs around 15,800 buses across the state, Sarnaik said, "So far, we are getting oil and diesel. We are not facing any trouble at present." "MSRTC's Managing Director spoke to Indian Oil Corporation officials, who said priority-wise allocation of fuel from the central government is done to the defence department first, followed by the railways, and third to the state corporations to avoid service interruptions. This secures the entire supply of diesel (to the MSRTC) for the next two months," he said.

He added, "We can't even have a plan B...The only plan B is that there is fuel for two months. If Indian Oil Corporation or our government do not have diesel or petrol for two months, then even we won't be able to do anything." Reacting to a question whether electric buses can be an option in such a scenario, Sarnaik said they will be able to offer limited relief as MSRTC operates only around 780 such vehicles.

"Our entire road transport system cannot run on 780 electric buses, we can only use them on some routes. But we cannot provide all the facilities to the commuters," he said.

Addressing a press conference later, Sarnaik said the MSRTC currently requires 10.87 lakh litres of diesel daily, which comes to 40 crore litres annually and costs about Rs 3,400 crore.

"This cost is likely to go up to Rs 4,700 crore with the planned induction of 8,000 new diesel-run buses," he said.

Sarnaik said the tendering process for diesel procurement is expected to result in annual savings of around Rs 241 crore for the MSRTC.

A competitive bidding system has now secured a higher discount of Rs 5.13 per litre, compared to Rs 3 earlier, resulting in saving of Rs 2.13 per litre which will come to around Rs 241 crore annually, he said.

MSRTC vice chairman and managing director Madhav Kusekar said that despite the ongoing war in West Asia, there is no issue of diesel supply to MSRTC.

At 233 locations in Maharashtra, Indian Oil Corporation, which has emerged as the lowest bidder, is going to supply diesel to the MSRTC, while at 91 locations, close to Gujarat and Goa border, they will re-invite a tender to avoid income loss to the state through Value Added Tax (VAT), he said.

Sarnaik said the MSRTC is currently burdened with an accumulated loss of around Rs 12,000 crore, with nearly Rs 750 crore loss till February in the ongoing financial year alone.

India imports about 88 per cent of its crude oil, 50 per cent of natural gas and 60 per cent of LPG needs. Before the US-Israel strikes on Iran on February 28 and Tehran's retaliation, more than half of India's crude imports, about 30 per cent of gas and 85-90 per cent of LPG imports came from Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

An Israeli attack on Iran's strategic gas fields of South Pars on Wednesday resulted in an intense Iranian retaliation on key energy infrastructure in a number of Gulf nations including Qatar's LNG (liquefied natural gas) hub of Ras Laffan. Qatar accounts for nearly 40 per cent of India's LNG requirement. PTI PS KK NP