LAHORE, June 7: An uncountable number of vehicles remained fuel-starved on the second day running on Tuesday as there was no supply of CNG and petrol paucity persisted in the city.

Tuesday was the second day of CNG (compressed natural gas) weekly holiday and the entire load was shifted to petrol supplies which remained meagre as one of the oil refineries went offline.

The shortage triggered protests in many parts of the city as most filling stations denied supplies to consumers. There were also reports of overcharging at some stations.

Long queues in and around filling stations repelled many a motorist and according to the city station owners, their supplies have dropped by almost 50 per cent creating crisis in the province.

“It has been total chaos at petrol pumps for the last 48 hours,” a consumer said while deploring that it had become a routine that petrol disappeared from stations without any prior indication.

Each time it disappeared, he said, the station owners had a different story to tell and the government woke up to the situation when things went out of control.

“What is the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) meant for. If it ensures profits for the oil distribution companies, why it does not ensure supplies for the consumers,” he protested.

Though the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) stations are getting supplies and providing petrol in the province, other companies have suffered supply problems. The PSO stations have to cater to much more consumers than it usually does.

A city station owner told Dawn the crisis had been lingering on for the last one month due to circular debt in the power sector. “The heavily indebted refineries now demand advance payment from the distribution companies, which they cannot pay. It has been a vicious circle which has been going on for the last four weeks or so.

“During the week, the CNG supplies take some load off the petrol stations. But during the CNG weekly holidays, the load shifts to petrol and triggers crisis.”

The situation would hopefully ease a bit by Wednesday when the CNG stations function but the permanent solution depended on overcoming circular debt crisis, he claimed.

The PSO controlled around 65 per cent of the market share and any supply squeeze on its part turned the market upside down, a dealer said. The company was telling its dealers that the ship carrying oil was docked at Karachi and things would improve in the next few days; it would take two days for supplies to reach up country, he said, indicating that it would take another 48 hours to have ample quantity of petrol.A PSO spokesman, however, denied any supply problem on the company side. He claimed all its petrol stations were getting normal supplies. “The only problem is they have to cater for others companies' clientele, which is putting additional pressure on its supplies.

“The PSO imports oil and does not depend on local refineries. The supply problem is with those companies which are getting oil from local refineries and one of them has gone offline,” the spokesman said.