Cooking gas refill supplies to customers of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL) are taking longer than usual with the national oil marketing company modernising its ERP platform.
The wait time to get a refill has increased for both domestic and commercial liquefied petroleum gas as there has been no supplies from the bottling plants after June 30, sources in the LPG trade said.
Attributing the situation to teething troubles being faced in the migration to the new software solution, sources said bottling plants, from where distributors get refill supplies, resumed operations in a limited way on Tuesday. HPCL has a bottling plant each in Hyderabad and Warangal.
Claiming that the entire LPG operations have under come strain, sources said a host of activities from bottling to invoicing of the cylinders was affected since July 1. The distributors are upset at the company not making a public announcement on the likely disruption in supplies to customers.
A few officials in charge of LPG operations in HPCL, however, had apparently intimated the distributors in their regions. In a communication, an official said the existing ERP system will be closed for regular transactions from June 30 at midnight and the migration to the SAP system will begin. Due to the humongous database, migration will take 4-5 days and the business transactions in SAP are expected to start from or after July 4. “During this blackout period of 4-5 days from July 1, no business transactions can be carried out. Therefore no [LPG] load can be invoiced and dispatched during this period,” the official said.
Contacted, a senior official of HPCL claimed that “LPG operations and refill deliveries to customers are normal”. He, however, declined to share details of the number of LPG cylinder loads supplied from the bottling plants, saying he is not authorised to speak to the media.
On how only LPG operations are getting impacted because of the new software rollout, sources said cooking gas is not a priority as compared to petrol and diesel, and hence the present situation where customers are agitated at the time taken to get the refills.
