Petrol crisis in South Punjab following refinery’s closure

Several southern districts of Punjab are facing a severe petrol crisis owing to the suspension of operations at Parco.

FAISALABAD/MULTAN: Several southern districts of the province including Multan, Faisalabad, Khanewal, Vehari and Dera Ghazi Khan are facing a severe petrol crisis owing to the suspension of operations at the Parco oil refinery at Kot Addu.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Tuesday took notice of the petrol shortage and sought a report from the departments concerned. He was told that the Parco refinery will not be able to resume supply before another eight to 10 days. The report said that the Attock oil refinery and the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) had been consulted and that the situation will improve in a few days.

With the exception of the PSO, which has a roughly 60 per cent market share, no other petrol dealers in the region, including Shell, Total and Caltex, are getting any supplies.

The shortage has hit the motorcyclists the hardest.  Talking to The Express Tribune, the motorcyclists said that they had to wait for long hours at the PSO pumps as the others were not selling petrol at all. “I had to visit a textile mill in Khudiawala but have cancelled the trip after looking at the long queue at the pump,” a motorcyclist at a PSO petrol pump in Faisalabad said. Others said that they had been waiting for their turn for more than an hour.

“I have been to five pumps before coming here. None of them has petrol, or that’s what they told me,” another person said. He said that his motorcycle was almost out of fuel and he was not sure if the supply at the pump would last until his turn.

Faisalabad region, which includes Faisalabad, Toba Tek Singh, Jhang and Chiniot districts, has a petrol demand of 500,000 litres daily. The supply for last three days, coming mostly from Karachi, has been around 200,000 – less than 50 per cent of the demand.

Mustafa Saleemi, All Pakistan Cartage and Traders Association Multan chapter president, however, rejected that there was a petrol shortage in Multan. He told The Express Tribune that though other dealers were not getting supplies, the PSO’s supply was adequate to meet the district’s demand. He said that there were three company-owned and 15 to 16 other PSO pumps in the district. He held that these pumps were getting more than 5,000 litres of petrol per day.

Saleemi alleged that the problem had arisen due to some elements that were buying petrol in containers and then selling it at inflated rates. “On our complaints, Mumtazabad police have caught several people red-handed selling petrol at Rs200 per litre,” he said. He maintained that only 20 per cent of the people were purchasing petrol out of need. The rest, he said, were buying to later sell it at inflated rates.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2010.