As the nation-wide truck operators' strike entered its third day, most petrol bunks went dry for want of timely replenishment by oil marketing companies.

Around mid-day, pressure on the petrol bunks started building up. By evening, most of these bunks went dry and were awaiting fresh supply from the oil marketing companies. There are close to 160 petrol bunks in Chennai city.

R Chidambaram, the manager (corporate communications) of Indian Oil Corporation, said: "On a normal day we deliver close to 250 to 300 loads of petrol and diesel to the city. Today we managed only 70 loads."

The average capacity of each tanker is around 10,000 kilo liters. In some of the petrol bunks the pressure to refill from motorists built up so much that the Chennai City traffic police had to intervene to clear the traffic jam.

As much as it was due to shortage of supply, the pressure on the bunks were also by motorists trying to 'top up' their petrol tanks for fear of bunks going dry.

"For security reasons we had to take the 'convoy approach' to deliver the fuel. Eight tankers with a pilot police vehicle and one at the rear had to be deployed to ensure safe delivery of fuel to the bunks," added Chidambaram.

On an average, each bunk has a storage capacity of 70,000 kilo litres for small bunks or 140,000 kilo litres for larger ones.

Of the 160 petrol bunks in the city, 45 are replenished by IOC and the balance 115 is catered to by other oil marketing companies.

Additional pressure in the city bunks were felt as the Korukkupet refilling unit of IOC caters to the city as well as locations like far off Pondicherry and Tada at Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border.

The pressure on supply of LPG was not as acute as that on petrol and diesel.

The LPG bottling unit at Ennore, Salem and Trichy reported that they were able to meet close to 80 per cent of the usual shipment to its distributors.

IOC has close to 80 LPG distributors in the city. LPG distributors in turn were able to reach the end consumer using small carts.

Hence any major backlog in the LPG distribution was avoided.  IOC is hopeful that they will be able to make additional trips of supply tankers in the night to make up for the shortages.

However the company admitted that even all-night trips will not make up for the backlogs created by the strike.