LAHORE: The oil supply situation eased in the city as the marketing companies, allegedly under pressure from the government, diverted the entire provincial quota to Lahore.

Opening of compressed natural gas (CNG) supplies also took some pressure off the city petrol supplies.

The filling station owners said soon queues would start getting bigger in smaller cities and there wouldbe a hue and cry in the next few days. They also warned that diesel supplies had started thinning and next crisis was just around the corner as the OMCs had already started delaying and reducing diesel.

`The temporary relief in the city, where 40 to 50pc of the stations have started operating and long queues have disappeared, is result of two factors. The entire provincial quota is being diverted to the city right now. Another layer is provision of the CNG, which has taken almost half a million vehicles off the petrol stations. Both these factors are temporary. Otherwise, there was no mentionable fresh import, which could justify the current relief,` explained MalikJehanzeb, owner of a filling station.

He said the gas supplies were already dwindling and so were oil supplies. The temporary relief, which started taking effect on Tuesday evening, continued on Wednesday. At least the stations which were working did not see long queues.

`If the diesel crisis hits the province, as being warned by the OMCs, the chaos would be much more painful and widespread compared to the one created by petrol situation, claimed Zakir Hussain, an oil dealer.

`Most of the heavy vehicles run on diesel, which sells four times more than petrol. So, one can simply multiply the resulting chaos by fourand imagine what province, especially rural areas and inter-city routes, will look like. This is a real danger and the government needs to at least minimise the trouble.

`The current diesel supplies are those that stations saved during their suspended operations. The fresh ones would be delayed and soon bigger problem may hit the country,` he forewarned.

`In fact, the entire credit (for relief) goes to the CNG stations, said Ghiyas Paracha of the CNG Association. Only Lahore, where these stations are operating, has seen some relief. Other areas of Punjab -even twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad are still having long lines because there are no CNG supplies. So, the city is escaping chaos only because of the CNG, where all 72 stations within the urban limits are operating.

`Though the managing director of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has assured the owners that supplies would be open for an indefinite period, pressure problem has already started showing. By Wednesday evening, most of these stations were complaining about dropping pressure and problems in operation. A lot would depend on the situation that emerges in the next two, three days,` he said.