Deepening crisis of petrol

IT is strange that the crisis of petrol that has hit the largest province of the country is perpetuating and complicating instead of mitigating with the passage of each day. This reflects poorly on the ability of the Government to address a problem that has multiplied woes of the people who are already hard pressed due to shortage of electricity and gas.

Life stands almost paralysed in the entire Punjab especially in big cities where long queues of vehicles are seen at petrol pumps but after wasting hours many of them return empty handed. Apart from Punjab, the shortage is now also being faced in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and people are being fleeced mercilessly by petrol pumps that are charging exorbitantly from consumers. The shortage has reportedly occurred due to sudden and abrupt closure of a platform at the Attock Oil Refinery that caters to nearly half of the requirements in Punjab but inability to foresee the problem and lack of strategy to address it on priority basis is highly regrettable. The Government must go into the issue deeply as it might have something to do with its decision to deregulate prices of petrol with companies trying to manipulate prices through engineered shortage, as we have been witnessing in the case of sugar for the last several years. There are also serious questions as to why the distribution companies have not been able to increase their storage capacity despite enjoying incentives for the purpose. Apart from taking measures to address the prevailing crisis, the Government must also devise a long term policy to accelerate the pace of exploration of oil and gas activities in the country. In the past, the Government came out with attractive incentives for off-shore and on-shore drilling but there is a sort of lull during tenure of the present regime.