Fuel oil supplies for 1.5 days selling out within 2 hours: Minister

Panicked consumers are now excessively buying fuel oil supplies from refueling stations within two hours the same amount they used to purchase in one-and-a-half days before the start of the Iran war, said Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood.

The long queues at refueling stations is the result of unfounded consumer worries, and not shortages in supplies, the minister said in reply to a question raised at the parliament by opposition lawmaker Hasnat Abdullah on Thursday.

In reality, the country’s fuel oil reserves are stable, and the government is sourcing new supplies from different countries to maintain the stability going forward, added Iqbal Hassan.

The power and energy minister also responded to a question over the country’s electricity supplies raised by ruling party lawmaker SM Jahangir Hossain.

There is currently no power crisis in the country, he said, but acknowledged that a sudden spike in summer demand, and infrastructural constraints are causing occasional outages.

Power supplies cannot be increased abruptly whenever demand increases in a region, he noted.

To avoid these ocassional outages, the government has given instructions for avoiding unnecessary lighting at government offices and shopping complexes, and for keeping air conditioning temperature at 25-degree Celsius.

Vigilance teams are operating to check unnecessary lighting effects displayed at shopping complexes, he said.

Authorities are also working to discourage the use of power-consuming equipment like water pumps, ovens, heaters, iron machines, washing machines and welding machines during times of peak demand.

The government has already adopted a 180-day action plan to reduce power outages in keeping with the ruling party’s election manifesto. Furthermore, short-, medium-, and long-term production expansion plans are being implemented.