DESPITE the huge queues of vehicles outside petrol stations in Greater Cairo earlier this week, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif insists that there is no shortage of diesel, the cheap fuel used by microbuses, buses and lorries. He attributed the crisis to rumours about raising the prices of some oil products, but then described the crisis as a logistical one, which the Ministry of Oil needs to speedily resolve. Deputy Oil Minister Mahmoud Nazim denies that there's a crisis, accusing greedy petrol station owners of hoarding their fuel, when they heard that the prices of some kinds of fuel might rise. However, many owners say that there's been a major shortage of diesel and cheap petrol (octane 80) for the past month, causing this crisis. This could be why the Prime Minister has described the problem as ‘a logistic crisis', which comes hot on the heels of the terrible shortage of butane gas cylinders, with poor people in many governorates suffering from a rise in the price of a cylinder from LE5 to more than LE50. These repeated crises make one wonder about the truthfulness of the repeated announcements by the Minister of Oil about new oil finds and good reserves of oil and natural gas in Egypt. If Egypt keeps on discovering oil and natural gas, why does the local market continue to suffer from shortages and rising prices of oil products? Is the Government exporting these strategic products at the expense of the local market or is local production unable to cope with the rising consumption? If the second suggestion is true, Egypt should swiftly try and find alternative energy sources for domestic and industrial use, in order to prevent the crisis escalating.
