Hoarding fears
\nIslamabad
\nPrime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday directed authorities to develop a dashboard to monitor the movement of petroleum products in Pakistan and share real-time data with provinces.
\nHe issued the directions during a meeting in Islamabad, convened to review the supply and storage of petroleum products in the country amid the disruption of the supply chain due to the conflict in the Middle East.
\nDuring the meeting attended by federal ministers and other high-ranking officials, PM Shehbaz ordered authorities to take swift and strict action against hoarders and immediately shut petrol pumps involved in creating artificial shortages of petroleum products.
\nOfficials from the Ministry of Petroleum told the meeting that the country currently had sufficient reserves of petroleum products to meet domestic requirements.
\nThe prime minister instructed the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to cancel the licences of petrol pumps involved in hoarding and initiate legal proceedings against them.
\nHe also directed the petroleum minister to visit provinces and work with provincial governments to make a strategy for conserving petroleum products and ensuring uninterrupted supply to the masses.
\nIn this regard, PM Shehbaz directed authorities to develop a dashboard that would help ensure effective monitoring of the transportation and supply of petroleum products across the country.
\nDeputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, federal ministers Ahsan Iqbal, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Attaullah Tarar, Jam Kamal Khan, Ali Pervaiz Malik and Awais Leghari attended the meeting. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) governor and chief secretaries of all four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit Baltistan, also participated in the meeting.
\nThe high-level meeting was convened amid concerns from market experts that petroleum product prices could rise in the country after the conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel spread across the Middle East.
\nSpeaking to The News, industry officials had said the situation could become \u201cworse than imagined\u201d for both supplies and prices of energy products if the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked.
\nThe concerns stem from Iran\u2019s announcement earlier in the week that no vessels belonging to the US, Israel, European countries or their allies would be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, after US and Israel launched an assault on Tehran on February 28.
\nAmid concerns over a possible fuel shortage in the country, Ogra on Thursday warned of strict action against the illegal hoarding of petroleum products.
\nIn a statement, an Ogra spokesperson said: \u201cAny premises found involved in the illegal storage of petroleum products will be sealed.\u201d
\nIn view of the prevailing geopolitical situation, the official said that the authorities are closely monitoring the petroleum supply chain to ensure the uninterrupted availability of products across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hoarding fears Islamabad Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday directed authorities to develop a dashboard to monitor the movement of petroleum products in Pakistan and share real-time data with provinces. He issued the directions during a meeting in Islamabad, convened to review the supply and storage of petroleum products in the country amid the disruption …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94721,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94701\/revisions\/94721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}