A vessel carrying 3,900 metric tonnes of LP gas is due to reach Sri Lanka on Sunday, 1 November, and Litro Gas Lanka has placed orders for a further 44,000 tonnes covering November, Hiru News reported on Saturday evening, quoting a company statement.
Litro says unloading has now begun from the vessel Goodwill, already docked, and that there is no difficulty meeting daily gas requirements. The company expects to release three million gas cylinders to the market during November.
What the November order implies
The 44,000-tonne order is the figure that gives the statement its weight. At the 3,900-tonne cargo size Litro has been receiving through October, that is roughly eleven shipments across the month — a materially higher tempo than the arrivals this desk has tracked over the past fortnight, and consistent with a company trying to build stock rather than meet demand shipment by shipment.
Three million cylinders in a month likewise sits well above the distribution rates reported during the shortage, when Litro was putting about 700,000 cylinders on the market across several days and, earlier, raising daily supply to near 100,000.
A discrepancy on the Goodwill
Litro’s statement describes unloading as beginning now from the Goodwill. This desk’s own record, drawn from a Litro release of 25 October, has the Goodwill carrying 3,900 tonnes and arriving on 24 October — a week earlier.
The two accounts cannot both describe the same discharge. Either the vessel has made a second voyage, or one of the two releases has carried the name or the date forward in error. The company’s statement as relayed does not address the point, and this desk is not able to resolve it from the filing.
Background
The shortage that prompted this run of shipments followed supply lapses at Laugfs Gas, against which the Consumer Affairs Authority has begun legal action, with state-owned Litro stepping in to cover the gap.
Not reported
The filing does not give the name of the vessel due on Sunday in a form this desk can render reliably — Hiru gives it only in Sinhala transliteration — nor its port of discharge or country of origin. It does not state Litro’s current stock position, the cost of the November order, or whether the 44,000 tonnes is above or below the company’s normal monthly intake.
Single source at the time of writing. No other verified newsroom had carried the Sunday arrival or the November order when this was written; Ada Derana, which has reported earlier Litro shipments, remains behind an HTTP 403 block to this desk.