ISLAMABAD: The oil companies are gearing up their supplies to the upcountry anticipating another round of panic buying on Tuesday and Wednesday ahead of the Azadi march.

“The situation gets aggravated as these are non-CNG days and the dependence of the motorists remains on petrol,” said a senior official of the state-run oil marketing company, the PSO.Because of the panic buying triggered on Friday, long queues were seen at petrol pumps which led to drying up of many filling stations.

A similar panic buying was witnessed on Saturday but the situation remained normal on Sunday and Monday as the oil companies responded by replenishing the stocks.

“The average daily supply of petrol to the outlets in Rawalpindi and Islamabad is 575,000 litres but at the end of last week the demand remained enormously high,” the official added.

The PSO is the largest oil company with more than half of the total petrol sales in the country.

The company supplied 753,000 litres of petrol to the twin cities from its Sihala depot on Friday, 1.05 million litres on Saturday and 928,000 litres on Sunday.

Despite the heavy supplies by the PSO and private oil companies, many filling stations mainly belonging to smaller firms went dry on Monday. While the situation seemed to have improved in the twin cities, there were still reports about the shortage of petrol in some areas of AJK, including Rawlakot, Bagh and the outskirts of Muzaffarabad.

The oil companies have also forwarded their requests to the Attock Refinery in Rawalpindi, the key source of petrol and other petroleum products in the region, while huge quantities are being dispatched from the Machike depots in Multan.

“We have 1.6 million litres on wheels from Machike and a major part of it will be forwarded to AJK. But the supply will continue in coming days to counter any surge in the demand,” the PSO official added.

The situation has placed smaller oil companies in a grave situation as they purchase products like petrol and diesel from the larger companies which due to the high demand are now unwilling to sell their products.

Published in Dawn, Aug 12th, 2014