The Bekaa Oil Crisis … Between “Smuggling” and “Shortage of Funds”

A serious gasoline crisis in the towns and cities of Baalbek-Hermel over the weekend. Other stations have removed their hoses and announced that they are running out of gas. Diesel fuel is available despite increased demand. Regarding gasoline, it caused a state of anxiety among citizens, as a result of the queues of cars that swept the stations that maintained some quantities two days ago, while most of the stations announced the interruption of gasoline, among them the largest stations in the city of Baalbek and the Baalbek International Highway.

One of the region’s fuel contractors explained to Al-Akhbar that gasoline has been in short supply at the stations since Friday, denying the statement that some stations have monopolized gasoline, despite the fact that most stations in the villages and Bekaa towns were not complying with the pricing scheme and sold between 28,000 cans of gasoline. Lira and 30 thousand lire. He explained that gasoline cannot be stored, unlike diesel, and “not even consumers can store and preserve it.” The crisis is the result of shortages of deliveries to fuel distribution companies’ stations and the smuggling of large quantities into Syria.
The owner of a fuel station in Baalbek was clearer in determining the whereabouts of the crisis afflicting the Bekaa, noting that “some merchants and even ordinary consumers and smugglers buy a canister of gasoline for forty thousand pounds and smuggle it to Syria through Hermel and the palatial villages and monsters of Mr. Ali to sell it and make huge profits, In light of the crisis Syria suffers under the “Caesar Law” and the closure of all lanes in northern Syria . Military sources denied “Al-Akhbar” the occurrence of diesel or gasoline smuggling through legitimate crossings, “because they are all subject to strict control, as well as the closure of illegal crossings.”
However, people from the aforementioned border villages assure “Al-Akhbar” that the smuggling of gasoline and diesel into Syria is witnessing an active movement “and in their eyes, merchant”, with tanks, cars and even motorcycles.
The representative of the fuel distributors in Lebanon, Fadi Abu Shakra, denied to “Al-Akhbar” that there was a smuggling of fuel in Syria, attributing the cause of the crisis in the Bekaa to “the shortage of fuel in the oil facilities of Zahrani for more than a week, given the delay in the opening of the funds, and that all “What is rumored about smuggling is unfounded, and its aim is to divert attention from the main cause of the crisis.” Abu Shakra revealed that the crisis would not last more than 48 hours, “since a ship arrived in Lebanon. In the next few hours its cargo will be unloaded and distributed to all Lebanese territories.”

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