Sufficient petrol, diesel stocks available in Pakistan: OGRA

The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) on Tuesday “strongly rebutted” speculations pertaining to the shortage of petroleum products in Pakistan.

“OGRA strongly rebuts the speculations on petrol/diesel shortages,” said OGRA spokesperson Imran Ghaznavi.

“The country has sufficient petrol and diesel stocks for meeting demand for 18 and 37 days, respectively.

“Furthermore, ships carrying 101,000MT of petrol is at berth/outer anchorage,” he said, adding that the local refineries are playing their role in meeting demand of petroleum products.

The statement comes after a breakdown triggered the worst outage in months on Monday amid speculation that Pakistan was running out of fuel to run its energy plants.

The outage, which began on Monday morning during the peak winter season, is the second major grid failure to hit the nation since October. Many people also have no running water due to a lack of power for the pumps.

The outage also hit internet and mobile phone services. Several companies and hospitals said they had switched to back-up generators, but disruptions continued across the board.

Analysts and officials blame the power problems on an ageing electricity network, which like much of the national infrastructure, desperately needs an upgrade the government says it can ill afford.

However, Federal Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir while addressing a press conference on Tuesday said that authorities restored its national power grid after 24 hours.

Addressing rumours, the federal minister shared that power stations have ample amount of fuel available. “We have diesel and furnace oil available. There is no fuel shortage in the country,” he said.

Dastgir said the prime minister has set up a three-member inquiry team, which will be chaired by Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik alongside senior officials to investigate the outage.