Litro Gas Lanka says it plans to distribute about 700,000 domestic gas cylinders island-wide by 27 October, citing high market demand, Hiru News reported on Sunday, quoting a special media release from the company.
The release gives a shipping schedule:
- The vessel Goodwill, carrying 3,900 metric tonnes of gas, arrived on 24 October.
- Distribution of 350,000 domestic cylinders from the cargo of the vessel that arrived on 22 October has continued on 23, 24 and 25 October.
- A further gas vessel is due on 26 October.
Litro says it is confident customers will be able to buy domestic gas from the market without a shortage within the coming days.
The 700,000 figure is two cargoes, and the arithmetic holds
The company does not explain how it arrives at 700,000, but the number is consistent with its own shipping figures.
A 3,900-tonne cargo yielding 350,000 cylinders implies an average fill of about 11.1 kg per cylinder — plausible for a mix weighted towards Litro’s 12.5 kg domestic unit with some 5 kg and 2.5 kg cylinders. At that same average, two cargoes — the 22 October vessel and the Goodwill — come to 700,000 cylinders almost exactly.
So the target is not an aspiration layered on top of the shipments; it is the 22 October and 24 October cargoes bottled and moved, with the 26 October arrival available behind it. That calculation is this desk’s own; the release states neither the average fill nor the derivation.
Where this sits in the shipment sequence
The Goodwill is the fifth gas vessel in this sequence and the 26 October arrival will be the sixth, on the Daily Mirror’s numbering.
On 20 October the company said the vessel Francois had arrived on 18 October with 3,900 tonnes and that the fourth vessel, Corinthian, was due on 22 October with a further 3,900 tonnes, the Daily Mirror reported. That identifies the unnamed “vessel that arrived on 22 October” in Sunday’s release as the Corinthian, and puts four consecutive cargoes of the same size — 3,900 tonnes each — into the country between 18 and 26 October.
A second newsroom confirms the plan — and differs on which cargo
NewsFirst independently reported the same announcement, filing at 1.31 p.m. on 25 October — about the same stage of the day as Hiru’s account. It carries the core figures identically: around 700,000 domestic cylinders distributed island-wide by 27 October, a vessel with 3,900 metric tonnes arriving the previous day, further shipments on 22 October, and uninterrupted distribution on 23, 24 and 25 October, NewsFirst reported.
The two filings diverge on one point. Hiru attributes the 350,000 cylinders to the cargo of the vessel that arrived on 22 October. NewsFirst attributes them to “the latest shipment” — that is, to the Goodwill, which docked on the 24th. Both cannot be describing the same hull.
The discrepancy does not disturb the arithmetic above, because under either reading a single 3,900-tonne cargo yields about 350,000 cylinders, and two such cargoes still come to roughly 700,000. What it does mean is that it is not established which of the two vessels is already being bottled and which is still being discharged — the difference between 350,000 cylinders moving now and 350,000 moving over the next two days. This desk records it as an open conflict rather than choosing between the outlets.
NewsFirst also does not mention the 26 October arrival that Hiru reports, so the sixth vessel in the sequence rests on Hiru alone.
Context: a shortage the government said was not one
This is the latest instalment in a supply squeeze that has run for more than a week. Litro told customers on 17 October that cylinders would reach the market the following Tuesday, and on 21 October the responsible minister said there was no shortage while queues persisted.
The steady cadence of 3,900-tonne arrivals, and a company statement issued on a Sunday to pre-announce a two-day distribution push, are not the behaviour of a normal supply month. Readers in the market this week should note that the 700,000 figure is a distribution plan, not a quantity already on retail shelves.
Not reported
The release does not name the 26 October vessel or give its tonnage, does not break the 700,000 down by cylinder size or district, and does not say how many cylinders are currently in the retail chain or what normal weekly demand is — the figure readers would need to judge whether 700,000 clears the backlog. It gives no reason for the “high demand” it cites, and no explanation of what caused the shortfall.
Neither filing names the 26 October vessel, and neither gives a figure for cylinders already in the retail chain.
Correction. An earlier version of this article said that “neither NewsFirst nor EconomyNext had filed on the announcement at the time of writing.” That was wrong as to NewsFirst, which had filed at 1.31 p.m. on 25 October — before this article was published — and whose account is now cited above and recorded as differing from Hiru’s on the 350,000-cylinder attribution. EconomyNext’s pages were genuinely unretrievable from this desk this cycle.
