Both fuels are up again.
The government has increased petrol by Rs0.39 and high-speed diesel by Rs2.40 with effect from August 25 (Dawn).
That takes petrol to Rs341.98 a litre and high-speed diesel to Rs370.69.
Those totals are derived: the notified increases applied to the previous rates of Rs341.59 and Rs368.29, which this newspaper verified on Saturday. The absolute figures were not given in the announcement as reported.
Diesel’s week
The direction of travel on diesel is now clear enough to state plainly.
It was cut by Rs32.63 on Thursday last week, from Rs395.69 to Rs363.06 — achieved not by reducing the petroleum levy but through an arrangement with four Karachi refineries to absorb part of their margin.
Since then it has risen Rs1.64, then Rs3.59, then Rs2.40. That is Rs7.63 returned in three consecutive reviews — a little under a quarter of the cut, inside five days.
Petrol has risen at every single review this month.
The tax that has not moved
The government continues to collect around Rs114 a litre in taxes and duties on petrol and Rs100 on diesel.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s sit-ins against the petroleum levy entered their ninth day on Monday, with emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman adding a new charge: that the government is giving oil companies an “undue margin” on petrol prices.
He has said negotiations are possible only on the abolition of the levy, and has called a nationwide shutter-down strike for 13 Rabi-ul-Awwal.
Why the price keeps moving
Rates are set against international movements, and crude has been held above $91 a barrel by the near-total halt of oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Field Marshal Asim Munir spent Monday in Tehran discussing the reopening of that strait. The refinery arrangement holding diesel below its formula price was written to last only until the situation there improves.
