Litro Gas has raised daily distribution to between 90,000 and 100,000 cylinders to address what the government now calls an ongoing gas shortage, Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said on Tuesday — attributing the squeeze to supply disruptions at the private competitor Laugfs Gas that date back to September.
Speaking at the weekly Cabinet media briefing, the Minister said Litro normally distributes around 74,000 cylinders a day and has lifted supply by approximately 25 per cent, the Daily Mirror reported at 5.21 p.m. Colombo time.
The Laugfs shortfall has pushed daily demand for Litro gas from about 1,100 metric tonnes to 1,600 metric tonnes, he said. A shipment of 3,000 tonnes has arrived and is being unloaded, and a further vessel carrying 3,900 tonnes is expected by 31 October.
Demand has risen almost twice as fast as supply
The two percentages in the Minister’s own account do not move together.
Daily demand going from 1,100 to 1,600 tonnes is an increase of about 45 per cent. Distribution has gone up by 25 per cent. The 20-point gap between those two figures is, in effect, the shortage consumers are queueing for — and it is visible in the government’s own numbers without any outside data.
The stated baseline has fallen by 6,000 cylinders a day
On 21 October, Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Finance Anil Jayantha told Parliament there was no reason to fear a gas shortage, that supplies had been delayed by “a day or two” because of disruptions linked to the Middle East war, and that Litro was already releasing 100,000 cylinders a day against a normal daily supply of 80,000 — which he also described as a 25 per cent surplus. This desk reported that statement, and the same newsroom filed it at 6.08 p.m. that evening.
Each claim is internally consistent. Eighty thousand plus 25 per cent is exactly 100,000. Seventy-four thousand plus 25 per cent is 92,500 — the bottom of Tuesday’s range. But the normal figure, which should be the stable quantity in both statements, has dropped by 6,000 cylinders a day in six days, and the same “25 per cent” has been applied to each base. Against the lower baseline, Tuesday’s upper figure of 100,000 is not a 25 per cent increase but roughly 35 per cent.
Two further things changed between the statements. On 21 October the cause was a war-related delay of a day or two and there was no shortage; on 27 October the cause is a Laugfs disruption running since September and the shortage is acknowledged as ongoing. A problem the government now dates to September was described in Parliament six days ago as a two-day delay.
The 27 October promise came due on Tuesday
Litro itself set the deadline. In a statement on 25 October the company said about 700,000 cylinders would be distributed island-wide by 27 October, and that customers would be able to buy gas “without a shortage within the coming days” — reported here on Sunday. Before that, on 17 October, the company’s chairman said the shortage would clear by 20 October.
Tuesday was the 27th. The Cabinet Spokesman described a shortage still in progress.
How much cover the new cargo buys
Against daily demand of about 1,600 tonnes, the 3,000-tonne shipment now being unloaded is under two days’ supply, and the next vessel is not due until 31 October. Using the average fill implied by Litro’s own 25 October shipping figures — 3,900 tonnes yielding roughly 350,000 cylinders, or about 11 kg per cylinder — 3,000 tonnes works out at roughly 270,000 cylinders, close to three days at the new distribution rate.
Either way the margin is thin, and this calculation is this desk’s own: the Minister gave no figure for existing terminal or bottling stocks, which is the quantity that determines whether the gap to 31 October is covered. Readers should also not set the 1,600-tonne demand figure directly against the cylinder count — around 92,500 domestic cylinders at the 12.5 kg size accounts for roughly 1,160 tonnes, with the balance going to commercial, bulk and other cylinder sizes. The filing does not break it down.
What Laugfs disclosed the night before
The Minister gave no reason for the Laugfs disruption. One piece of relevant context is already on the record, from the company rather than the government.
On Monday evening Laugfs Gas PLC told the Colombo Stock Exchange it is in informal discussions with interested parties over its wholly owned subsidiary Laugfs Terminals Limited, which operates the 30,000-tonne LPG terminal at Hambantota International Port — talks that could extend to selling part or all of its shareholding. This desk reported that filing on Tuesday. The company said no agreement had been reached on structure or terms and that any financial impact could not yet be determined.
No filing connects the terminal talks to the supply disruption, and this report does not assert a link. The two facts are set side by side because import terminal capacity is the physical constraint on how fast LPG can be landed, and because the government has now named this company’s supply as the reason households are queueing. Whether the disruption reflects a commercial decision, a financing problem, an import constraint or something else is not established by any source available to this desk.
One note from the same day’s market report
Laugfs Gas was among the strongest positive contributors to the All Share Price Index on Tuesday, as the Colombo Stock Exchange ended a six-session losing streak. The market report offers no explanation for the move, and none should be read into it here; it is recorded because it ran on the same day the government named the company’s supply as the cause of the shortage.
Not reported
The Minister did not say why Laugfs supply has been disrupted, whether the company has stopped importing, or what its market share was before September. No filing gives the number of cylinders currently in the retail chain, a district breakdown, when the shortage is now expected to end, or whether the 74,000 figure represents normal demand or Litro’s own normal output. The reason for the change from the 80,000 baseline is not addressed, and no one has been asked to reconcile the two statements.
Sourcing
The Tuesday statement rests on one verified newsroom. Ada Derana filed on it (“Litro increases daily gas supply to nearly 100,000 cylinders amid shortage”, news ID 250647) but is not cited, as its pages have returned a CloudFront error to this desk for 48 consecutive days and cannot be dated. The live Hiru News and NewsFirst homepage rails did not carry the briefing item.
Readers searching this story should be aware that Sri Lanka had a structurally identical LPG crisis in 2021, in which Laugfs halted sales over price controls and a state-owned Litro raised distribution to about 100,000 cylinders a day to fill the gap. Those reports surface readily in search and read as current. They are not: the EconomyNext and Daily News items concerned are from 2021 and 2022, and none of their figures, quotes or named officials belong to the present shortage. Nothing from that episode is used in this report.