New Delhi: Due to the ongoing conflict in West Asia, the government is facing a major shortage of bitumen, which is sure to impact the construction and maintenance of tar roads. While the price of VG-40, the most commonly used grade of bitumen, has almost doubled since the conflict began, its availability has fallen short of the estimated requirement of about six lakh tonnes by July 15 for highway projects alone.Industry insiders said crude availability in the country remains comfortable due to Russian oil imports, but this has not led to improvement in bitumen supply. Russia’s sweet crude cannot produce bitumen grades that are suitable for Indian weather conditions.Russian oil has very low sulfur levels, which naturally produces low bitumen grades such as VG-10 or VG-30 without special processing.“VG-40 is produced from crude oil that we get from West Asian countries and even most of the finished products were imported from these nationals through the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict has affected this supply and its impact is felt on the maintenance and construction of highways,” said a person familiar with the developments.The issue was also raised in the last meeting of the Informal Group of Ministers (IGOM) chaired by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, in which it was highlighted that non-availability of required quality of bitumen has reduced the pace of highway construction by one-fourth in April, sources said. Officials said the impact is similar in case of rural, municipal and state roads.Industry players said the road transport ministry has notified that highway builders in all types of projects will be adequately compensated for the high price of bitumen, but the main challenge is to get the necessary supplies before monsoon for timely maintenance. The price of one tonne VG-40 across various oil marketing companies (OMCs) rose from Rs 53,000-58,000 on March 1 to over Rs 1 lakh on May 1.“The prices are rising further. But the bigger challenge is how do we get bitumen to complete our work even at a higher cost. This has been discussed several times with officials and OMCs as well. Looking at the current availability trend, the supply will be much less than the requirement,” said a senior official of a highway construction company.Officials said although the current availability of bitumen with OMCs is very low, efforts are being made to see how to get more supply, including import at a higher price.