Anxious petroleum ministry officials, who are closely monitoring the supply situation following the Gujarat cyclone, point out that the situation is likely to improve with yesterday's partial re-commissioning of the Kandla-Bhatinda pipeline which supplies around 6 million tonnes of petro-products per annum. But with the supply situation still not normal, more reports of ``dryouts'' can be expected over the next week orso.

The pipeline, which is the main artery for supplies of petro-products to the northern and western states, was shut down following the cyclone in Gujarat as its pumping house had got submerged and its two compressors damaged. The station area was flooded with seven to nine feet of sea water, causing extensive damage to the sophisticated, high precision equipment.

After 10 days of work during which the Indian Oil team waded through slush and repaired/replaced most damaged control panels and instrumentation systems, however, only one pump has been made operational so far. As a result, the pipeline is pumping products at around 500 kilolitres per hour, against its maximum speed of 900 kilolitres per hour -- this pump, too, was flown in from Mumbai. It is expected that the second compressor will become operational within a couple of days, after which full-capacity pumping will resume. While the oil companies had managed to augment supplies by road as well as by rail, itself a stupendous task in terms ofmobilisation of trucks and other resources, this could meet only around 40 per cent of the normal supplies. A bigger problem, however, which will take much longer to tackle is that of the jetties which are used for unloading products such as diesel at Kandla. Of the four jetties there, only one is operational, where the ship J.N. Vyas is currently unloading its 8,000 tonnes of petro-products for transshipment through the pipeline. One more is expected to become operational within a couple of days -- this jetty was relatively undamaged, but the path to it had been blocked by debris which needed to be cleared. As a result of this, unloading of petro-products is likely to remain affected for weeks. At full capacity, the four jetties at Kandla handle a maximum of around 25,000 tonnes of petro-products each day. With unloading operations at the one functional jetty beginning just a few days ago,it is obvious, operations here will continue to be hit. Alarmed petroleum ministry officials continue to hold a series ofdaily meetings to find ways to deal with the crisis emerging out of the damage caused by the Gujarat cyclone last fortnight. And though it is not strictly his job, it is understood that secretary Probir Sengupta is keeping a close tab on the measures taken to ensure that there are no supply shortages, especially in view of the fact that the agriculture demand is very high currently. Small fact-finding teams have also been sent out to assess the supply situation in various states.