India, March 20 -- Amid an ongoing global energy crisis due to the war in West Asia, the government has evoked the Essential Commodities Act making it mandatory for all entities "engaged in production, processing, refining, storage, transportation, import, export, marketing, distribution and consumption of petroleum products and natural gas" to furnish their latest data to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), an official said.

"Yesterday, under Section 3 of the Essential Commodities Act, government has issued a Gazette Notification, whereby PPAC has been designated as a nodal agency for collection, compilation, maintenance, and analysis of information," said Sujata Sharma, joint secretary in the ministry of petroleum. PPAC is...