Karachi came to a stand-still and was plunged into darkness as the full impact of the recent petrol shortage hit the south of the country on Wednesday after wreaking havoc in the northern areas of the country a day earlier. Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Spending Committee Chairman Malik Khuda Bakhsh told Pakistan Today that 88 percent of the filling stations in Karachi had exhausted their supply, and no petrol was expected in the city for the next five days.
The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) announced almost 10 hours of power outages in the city because of the fuel shortage. Though many parts of the city usually remain without power for hours at a time owing to the KESC’s tussles with its employees and subsequent closure of its offices, the company increased the duration of load shedding even further on account of the
lack of fuel.
Bakhsh said Pakistan State Oil (PSO)’s shipment would not be able to anchor at Port Qasim for the next five days because of a delay in announcing the letter of credit. He said the provincial capital had been facing acute fuel shortage for the last three days, and on Wednesday five of the major oil marketing companies were forced to shut down their filling stations after they exhausted their fuel stocks.
Many filling stations were closed down during the day and citizens were seen queuing up at filling stations of Total and BYCO by the evening, both of which together run five percent of the city’s filling stations.
Residents of the city stored fuel in bottles and containers as the situation was predicted to worsen further. Motorcycles run out of fuel were seen abandoned across the city’s most heavily-affected areas.
Bakhsh said that the fuel shortage had hit the entire country, which was why Karachi could not receive any support from alternative fuel sources and reserves. He said that the Attock Oil Refinery’s suction pump has been out of order for the last 15 days, causing fuel shortage from the Northern Areas to Lahore, whereas the Pakistan Oil Refinery had been closed down for annual maintenance and was expected to begin functioning in another 15 days. He said PARCO had also been closed for a long time because of mechanical faults, and it was expected to reopen after completion of annual maintenance. Bakhsh said that there would be no fuel supply across the country for the next five days.
The Petroleum Ministry had directed OGRA on Tuesday to issue show-cause notices to seven oil marketing companies for their failure to keep the required amount of petrol in store.