After almost a week of no diesel, Kapit supply returns to normal today

KAPIT (Dec 29): Diesel supply here returned to normal around noon today after the town’s two Petronas stations were without the fuel for nearly a week.

After the fuel tanker carrying diesel arrived here just before 11am, long queues of vehicles built up and caused traffic congestion in the town.

When contacted, Kapit District Council walikota Lating Minggang said the national oil company must immediately address the situation to ensure all service stations throughout Sarawak are supplied with diesel.

He stressed such a situation should not occur as Sarawak is the main oil and gas producer in Malaysia.

“In the first place, a contingency plan must be in place. Petronas being one of the suppliers of diesel fuel to the state should have foreseen this sort of issue could occur. Thus, it is quite surprising that their buffer stock could not meet the requirements of demand in their contingency plan,” he said.

“Petronas being the national oil company and the custodian for fuel security in the country must provide the level of confidence to the state leaders to ensure that there will be no recurrence nor interruptions to the state’s fuel supply in the near future.”

Leveraging on this diesel fuel dry-out, he said it would be good if the state could explore having its own fuel supply contingency plan.

He suggested Sarawak could build its own fuel depot for fuel security, build an oil refinery as an integral part of the state’s petrochemical industry, as well as increase the state’s current buffer stock for fuel by building more tank farms to meet current and future demand.

He added there would also be multiplier effects and potential benefits such as the ability to tap into potential business opportunities, employment opportunities, value-added spin-offs from the industry, and new downstream businesses.