KARACHI, April 16: Sales of oil marketing companies (OMCs) rose by 0.20 per cent in March 2002.
A total of 1.484 million tons of diesel, petrol, kerosene, light diesel, furnace oil and JP-1 were sold by the OMCs — Pakistan State Oil (PSO), Shell Pakistan, Caltex, Attock Petroleum and Total/Pearl— last month as compared to 1.481 million tons in March 2001.
According to figures compiled by a leading OMC, sales of diesel rose by 7.51 per cent to 591,821 tons last month as against 550,461 tons in the same period of 2001.
Oil analysts attribute increase in diesel sales to slight increase in industrial activities as well as in transport sector.
On the other hand, sales of furnace oil dropped by 5.74 per cent to 674,539 tons from 715,599 tons mainly due to its lower demand following conversion of power plants and cement plants to natural gas and coal.
Sales of petrol also plunged by 4.57 per cent to 91,799 tons from 96,200 tons in March 2001 due to rising conversion of cars to compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Besides, a large segment of car buyers now prefer diesel cars instead of petrol cars due to a sizable difference in prices.
Sales of kerosene rose to 32,927 tons from 32,406 tons while sales of light diesel oil surged to 23,886 tons from 23,214 tons. Sales of JP-1 posted a rise of nine per cent to 69,848 tons last month from 64,031 tons in March 2001.
