KARACHI: The oil industry has informed the government of the expected shortage of petrol and high speed diesel (HSD) in the coming days due to insufficient imports and limited local availability.
The representative body of the oil sector, the Oil Companies Advisory Council (OCAC), has informed the regulator Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) about the shortage in a letter.
OCAC said that the imports of motor spirit/petrol and HSD were finalized after extensive deliberations and the review of product availability for the month of November 2022 to the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs). Permission granted as per demand.
Under product review, a deficit of 210,000 MT of HSD and 147,000 MT of petrol was worked out. The meeting highlighted that HSD imports in November could be challenging due to limited availability and high premium in the international market. So till now only PSO has booked 220,000 MT and 10,000 MT delivery by Flu Petroleum.
However, it is alarming to note that petrol imports have not even been booked as per the expected sales volume and stock cover. The OCAC letter said that the import plan should have been finalized to the importers but, so far, there is deficit in the import plan.
This critical issue was also highlighted in a meeting with industry representatives on November 1. However, no firm commitments were received in writing from the importing OMCs, it said.
A few OMCs’ sales for October have been higher than their expectations and have been consistently taking lower stocks since October 2022.
OMCs, which were supposed to bring in imports for consumption in October, received their consignments in the last week of October. Therefore, the product was not available for use during the month for which it was intended. Similarly, OMCs which were allowed to import last month for use next month have already used the parcel, the letter said.
OCAC said, “Considering the consistent sales trend and the number of days currently being maintained by OMCs, we foresee product availability challenges in various pockets of the country in the days to come, due to inadequate imports. and due to limited local availability,” OCAC said. Requests the regulator to issue necessary instructions to import OMCs to strictly follow import plans to avoid shortages.
