KARACHI –Oil Companies Advisory Council (OCAC) CEO Ilyas Fazil reminded consumers that “there is a sufficient stock of fuel available in the city.” Meanwhile, the filling stations were swarmed with thousands fuel seekers carrying containers, buckets and bottles here, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy of a petrol shortage, which up till now had managed to skirt the country’s financial capital.
Meanwhile, rumours spread like wildfire despite there being no shortages through the weekend perhaps due to irresponsible news coverage of the crisis in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Shabbir Suleman, the chairman of the CNG-Petroleum Dealers Association, said, “This is a virus that will now take couple of days and a lot of government effort to go away, No one had foreseen this happening in Karachi. But reports about the petrol shortage in other parts of the country caused panic among people here and many of our pumps dried up within hours.” However, the rumours appeared to feed upon themselves in creating the perception of a shortage, which in turn created an actual shortage at many petrol pumps across the country’s largest city.
Suleman said, “An average petrol pump has the capacity to store between 25,000-30,000 litres, which is sufficient for two to three days. Now imagine what would happen if 15,000 litres is sold within a few hours. Obviously, some pumps would run dry.”
