Do the oil companies have their own reserves to stem such shortages?
Before the oil companies are licensed, they are required to show proof of sufficient storage capacity to last for at least 10 days even when supplies are not flowing into the country. But demand for petroleum products in the country has been growing at a rate that had not been envisaged. This includes growth in transport and construction happening in the country that runs on petroleum products. Incidentally, in the past, we never used to generate electricity using petroleum products. Today we need close to 500,000 litres of diesel to daily to generate the electricity supplementing the hydropower produced at Jinja. This has contributed to the increased demand for petroleum products. Furthermore, most urban families now have a vehicle or vehicles which depend on petroleum products. On a daily basis we consume over 2.2 million litres as a country. This demand has grown by over 6-7%. Some companies have been known to take advantage of the crisis to hoard and influence the pricing. Do you t
