I would like to refer to the news item in your issue of May 10 headlined 'Oil to be sought from Kuwait at subsidised rates'. According to the figures stated, Pakistan produces roughly 26 percent of crude oil requirements.
It imports 46 percent requirement from Saudi Arabia and 25 percent from Dubai and Qatar. A small percentage, 3 percent, comes from other sources.
The point is that our import of crude is from sources nearer home rather than from far off Canada or the United States. Yet the basis on which oil marketing companies work out the retail oil prices in Pakistan is the price of oil in United States.
The rationale of it is beyond comprehension. The tanker freight in case of our crude imports from neighbouring Dubai, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia is only a fraction of what it is for between United States and Pakistan.
Additionally, supplies of crude from these brotherly Muslim countries are known to come at concessional rates. Besides this Pakistan's own 26 percent production does not carry any tanker freight. It is moved by trucks or trains on land. There is a substantial saving in transportation.
The government often cites the case of oil prices in India claiming that oil prices there are higher than in Pakistan. What is not taken into account by it is that there is no uniform price of oil all over India. The longer the distance it travels from port, the higher the price is. Not so in Pakistan. It is the same throughout. Oil marketing companies are pocketing huge windfall incomes thereby.
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