Pakistan's severe petrol crisis
has brought parts of the nation to a standstill and largely affected Punjab, the
country's most populous province, and the national capital Islamabad, with pumps
going dry and long queues of motorists waiting for hours to get a few liters of
fuel.
The crisis spread to the country's financial hub Karachi on Monday, triggering
panic buying of petrol. There were also reports from different parts of the
country of hoarding of petrol and black market sale of fuel at exorbitant rates.
Due to which people are facing many problems, a large number of queue are
standing for quest of petrol, with this shortage many other problem rose up in
the country, load shedding ,and fare of local transport increased over night and
also many factories stopped their machineries due to the shortage of petrol .
In the whole game, the nabob government is still busy in taking nap and the poor
public is in anticlimax mood and thinking about their votes!
In this juncture time, whole PMLN is cynosure of media. Everyone is talking
about this issue and majority of people are saying this is the failure of PMLN
government.
After 16 December, when Imran khan declare to cancel his dharna.Media and People
were thinking that this will be a GOD gifted chance to PMLN to bounce back and
do some thing for the people, but PMLN government fully fail to deliver this
opportunity and two senior minister themselves accept this crisis, is the
failure of government.
This crisis started when PSO wrote a letter to ministry of petroleum, shahid
khaqan abassi on 30th of September. But Mr. khaqan doesn’t give any response to
letter in which PSO mention its bad situation due to which no bank is ready to
open line of credit, 198 billion defaulter and penalties and fine of 1.4 million
dollars have also been imposed on it .
Shahid khaqan Abbasi is one of the most senior ministers of PMLN who is also an
owner of the most popular flying company Air blue, nowadays is a cynosure of
media.
Mr. khaqan is changing his statements on every seconds just like an insect
chameleon.At the beginning, he was saying that due to decrease in petrol prices,
the use of petrol increases up to extra 60% and suddenly this shortage took
place.Another reason was the blockage of CNG in Punjab which also doubles the
load over petrol. On the next day, he blamed PSO that PSO doesn’t complete his
home work and due to which PM suspend four senior officers of PSO and Last night
when senior anchor person Hamid Mir asked about the PSO letter he said that for
this letter, ministry of Finance is responsible because his team already warn
ministry of Finance about the debts on PSO but they does give any response to us
!!
After this statement, a verbiage war started between the ministers of government
and Mr. ishaq Dar fully deny these allegations and said at their separate news
conferences, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar absolved himself of any direct or
indirect responsibility for the petrol shortage and termed it “a conspiracy
against the government”.
Due to falling prices of oil in International markets, Government got an emense
benefit of 6 billion but it didn’t turn out with some blessing effects on the
public of Pakistan due to mishandlings on the Government.
Mr. Abbasi said the investigation team will submit its report to the prime
minister on Tuesday. He appealed to the public to avoid panic buying as supplies
had been beefed up and promised over Rs5 per liter reduction in prices of
petroleum products on Feb 1.
Anger is growing over the shortage amongst Pakistanis who already have to deal
with chronic power cuts that can see them struggle without electricity for 12
hours a day or more at a time of a global glut in oil supplies.
And once again people are chanting the same slogan “Go Nawaz Go “because Solving
Pakistan's energy crisis was a key campaign pledge for Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif in the run-up to the 2013 general election, and the shortage is heaping
fresh pressure on his government.
Here are five reasons why Pakistan is facing the petrol crisis:
1. Most reports of blamed the crisis on state-run fuel importer Pakistan State
Oil (PSO), which was refused further credit earlier this month to pay for
imports beyond its existing credit of about $2 billion.
PSO also failed to collect dues from private power generation companies for
supply of furnace oil. The power companies, in turn, were unable to pay because
of a circular debt as they too are owed large amounts by state-run power
distribution companies.
2. Petroleum minister Abbasi blamed the crisis on an unexpected surge in demand
and the unplanned closure of a refinery but his stance has been rubbished by
economists.
3. Experts have also argued that the government has failed to build up adequate
oil stocks as it has been seeking to keep expenditure on oil imports in line
with spending limits under a loan program me with the IMF.
4. Pakistan was left with oil stocks for less than three days and imports of oil
had totally dried up after PSO defaulted on its payments and said it would need
at least Rs. 100 billion and eight weeks to retrieve the situation, leading
newspaper Dawn reported.
The daily quoted PSO officials as saying no oil consignments had arrived at any
port in Pakistan since the past two weeks. During a normal fortnight, six to
eight ships, each carrying 65,000 tonnes of oil, come to the country.
5. PSO had exhausted all its overdraft facilities and its letters of credit
lines had been choked as its total dues were more than Rs. 215 billion, a PSO
official told Dawn. PSO is owed Rs. 190 billion by the power sector and Rs 12.5
billion by state-run Pakistan International Airlines.
"The entire problem is the result of a financial liquidity crisis in the
state-owned oil company PSO.Whole problem arosed due to circular dept,(60 Arabs
of Sindh Govt and 100 Arabs of Baloch to Water and Power ministry and 170 Arabs
of Water and Power ministry to Petroleum ministry)which if could have paid in
time, would have saved supply chain throughout the province. The government is
trying to pin the blame on other factors but mounting evidence indicates that
the crisis is financial in nature. High level accountability is necessary,"