Staff Reporter<:/strong>
Monir Hossain Chowdhury, spokesman and joint secretary of the Ministry of Energy and Power, yester-day said that there are sufficient reserves of octane and petrol in the country to meet demand for the next two months.
He also assured that there will be no shortage of diesel, particularly to ensure that the farmers do not face any difficulties.
The spokesperson was addressing a press conference at the ministry’s conference room in Bangladesh Secretariat here.
He said that from March 3 to April 14, a total of 916 mobile court drives were conducted across the country, filing a total of 3,510 cases. During these operations, fines amounting to Taka 15.6 million were collected and 45 individuals were sentenced to imprisonment.
The mobile courts recovered a total of 5,42,236 liters of illegally stored fuel during the drives, he said, adding the seized fuel includes 306,000 liters of diesel, 39,776 liters of octane, 87,959 liters of petrol and 48,500 liters of furnace oil.
He also shared the current fuel stock levels that are diesel 113,085 metric tons, octane 31,821 metric tons, petrol 18,021 metric tons and furnace oil 77,546 metric tons.
Chowdhury noted that the country’s only state-owned refinery – Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) in Chattogram – processes about 1.5 million metric tons of crude oil annually, supplying roughly 20 per-cent of the nation’s total fuel demand.
Due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, scheduled crude oil shipments from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could not be received in March and April. However, the existing reserves have allowed supply to continue uninterrupted.
He expressed his hope that the next shipment will arrive by April 20. A crude oil vessel has already de-parted from Yanbu port in Saudi Arabia and is expected to reach Bangladesh in late April or early May.
The spokesperson reassured that even if ERL operations are temporarily disrupted, it will not significant-ly affect fuel supply, as sufficient refined fuel is already in stock.
Replying to a question regarding fuel price adjustments, he said the government has not yet made any final decision and is not in favor of increasing the prices at this moment, considering the public hard-ship.
