Chennai Runs out of Gas

Today the Chennai ran out of gas. By noon the few remaining pumps that were open had lines that wrapped around the block. A few, like the Indian Oil pump across from my house went for more than a mile. In the center of the city I passed a stalled Hyundai Santro with a woman in tears behind the wheel. She had run out of gas while going from station to station looking for a place to fill up. By ten at night, the few remaining pumps had police posted outside of them ready just in case a riot broke out. I saw people filling jugs for drinking water, apparently hoarding the fuel just in case the gas supply doesn't get turned back on.


I stopped at several different pumps and asked attendants why there was no gas and got conflicting answers. A police officer with several stars on his eppillete outside one bunk told me that there was a strike. Fed up by paying $5.30 a gallon, truck drivers refused to supply gas to stations across Tamil Nadu in a bid to the government to lower petrol prices. In a country where the median income still overs around $300 a year, the current price of petrol is far higher than just prohibitive, it's downright obscene. However another source at a local newspaper told me that gas supplies were slow to come in from abroad and that this could be a sign of things to come.

There is still no clear consensus about whether this is merely a blip, or the beginning of a trend in Tamil Nadu. I expect that the issue won't be resolved tomorrow. There will probably be a lot of stalled cars on the roads in a few days.