The crippling shortage of CNG (compressed natural gas) that has hit Mumbai’s autorickshaws and black-and-yellow taxis, as well as aggregator cabs, hard is likely to be restored today. However, many of the cabs, rickshaws, and a few buses continued to face disruptions, with many CNG fuel pumps still seeing long queues or were shut.

“I managed to fill gas early morning, but only after waiting over two hours,” an auto rickshaw driver said. Usually, it takes a maximum of 15-30 minutes.

Another waiting in a queue at a gas station said that, because of long queues and little gas, he only opted to do short trips on Monday. He was hopeful things would get back to normal by tomorrow.

“Several gas stations are closed. Those who have gas have very long queues. We have faced a lot of problems,” he said.

The crisis first began after a main gas supply line of Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL) was damaged. That disruption affected gas supply to Mahanagar Gas’ City Gate Station. This affected CNG supply across Mumbai, Thane and neighbouring Navi Mumbai.

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“Due to third-party damage to the main gas supply pipeline of GAIL inside RCF (Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers) premises at Trombay, the gas supply at MGL’s City Gas Station (CGS) at Wadala has been affected,” Mahanagar Gas (MGL) said in a statement.

MGL said it ensured supply to its piped natural gas (PNG) customers on priority without interruption. Due to the stoppage of gas supply at CGS and, in turn, the MGL pipeline network, several CNG gas stations had to close.

MGL has 389 CNG stations, and 225 of them were operating as per its statement on Monday night.

Most of the auto rickshaws and black and yellow cabs in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai run on CNG, so this shortage has hit them hard, forcing many to wait in queues for hours outside gas stations or simply take a day off.

Once the damaged pipeline is repaired, the supply should be restored to the CGS Wadala, which in turn should lead to normalisation of MGL’s network.