Gas crackdown after spate of explosions

After a spate of gas explosions in the city, Beijing launched a two-month crackdown on poor-quality liquefied gas bottles in restaurants Wednesday.

Seventy percent of liquefied gas bottles in local restaurants do not measure up to the standards, and half of the dining venues fail to set the bottles in a separate room as ordered, Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment said Thursday.

"The statistics come from a recent investigation by the commission. As this seems to be a potential safety hazard, given the number of recent incidents in small restaurants, the safety management conference called up citywide gas suppliers," said Wang Qingwen, media officer at the commission.

Wang said he did not know how many restaurants were inspected, nor if punishment was meted out to those that failed.

On July 10, a gas explosion in the kitchen of a small bakery in Shijingshan district injured two customers, the Beijing Times reported.

Four customers were seriously burnt while eating lunch in a noodle restaurant in Haidian district after an gas explosion in the kitchen on May 10. Six days later, a 29-year-old man was injured in a restaurant in Chaoyang district which had stored its liquid gas only one meter from the heat source.

"Besides not taking protective measures over the bottles, many blasts have a lot to do with the poor-quality gas a lot of restaurants buy from private gas suppliers," said an official, surnamed Yue, from Beijing Liquefied Petroleum Gas Company, a State-owned gas supplier.

"They usually add much cheaper dimethyl ether into the gas to make more profit, but the ether can easily corrode the sealing on the bottle causing gas leaks and explosions later," said Yue.

According to the Xinhua News Agency Thursday, 13 liquefied gas suppliers in Beijing were fined from 10,000 to 50,000 yuan ($1,570-7,850) for putting dimethyl ether into gas cylinders.

An employee, surnamed Wang, at a gas station in Dongcheng district said non-Beijingers have to pay more for gas than Beijing residents.

"Locals pay 40 yuan for bottled gas, but the price for people from outside Beijing can be over 100 yuan, so they'd rather choose private suppliers which don't care about the policy," said Wang.

"But the suppliers also don't care if the bottles leak, because their facilities don't get checked annually," said Wang.

Gas is subsidized for city residents to promote use of environmentally friendly fuel, according to the municipal reform and development commission.