By Hani Hazaimeh

AMMAN - The fuel crisis continued unabated in most major cities on Monday for the second day, with long queues of vehicles at gas stations waiting to refill their empty tanks while traffic police were still handling the resulting traffic jams.

Meanwhile, gas station owners said the problem might persist till the weekend, noting that their daily sales of oil derivatives doubled during the past two days, blaming the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company (JPRC) for failing to meet their demands in due time.

A worker at a gas station in Amman said the facility had to close down because it was not possible to get any deliveries on Monday.

Another gas station owner cried foul, accusing the refinery of exercising favouritism in meeting fuel orders. Some said their Thursday orders were delivered on Sunday, while others did not experience such a delay. The owner went as far as charging that some refinery officials asked for a “bribe” to facilitate his order.

JPRC’s CEO Ahmad Rifai rejected the allegations as “an attempt by gas station owners to blame others” for the crisis.

Rifai stressed that on Friday, upon requests by governors, the refinery sent deliveries to gas stations that ran out of fuels although they had not ordered any. They refused to receive the shipments, he said.

He insisted that he was personally overseeing the orders to make sure that the process was going on as smoothly as possible, adding that priority is given to stations that have contracts to supply hospitals, schools and those located on highways, in addition to stations in southern governorates, where there are few such facilities.

A gas station owner said his sales following Saturday’s drop in fuel prices amounted to around 96,000 litres of gasoline 90 and 64,000 litres of gasoline 95, compared to his daily average of 48,000 litres and 20,000 litres respectively in a normal working day.

He claimed that his loss due to the last update to fuel price reached JD1,000, while it was JD7,000 in the previous update and around JD15,000 in the one before.

Due to declining international oil prices, the government has lowered fuel prices seven times in a row since August 11.

The businessman stressed that unless the government specifies a certain date for the next update, the market will see a recurrence of the shortage, particularly if the fuel prices go down again.

Two days ahead of the latest price change, consumers were filling up their vehicles’ tanks with minimum amounts of fuel in order to benefit from the drop in prices, while gas stations stopped orders from the refinery to minimise their losses.

According to Rifai, the JPRC had delivered, by 8:30pm Monday, 10,000 tonnes of oil derivatives, compared to 12,560 tonnes on Sunday, a record figure in the company’s half-a-century history.

The fuel shortage disrupted daily life, with many taxi drivers refusing to give rides to customers who wanted to go for relatively long trips, fearing that they might not find gas on the road if their vehicles ran out of fuel.

Samer Abu Gboush, a Zarqa taxi driver, said he preferred taking citizens inside Zarqa where it would be easier for him to look for a gas station in case he ran out of gas.

“I turned down several calls from regular customers who wanted me to take them to Jerash,” he said, adding that he was not sure if he would find fuel on the way.

A company employee, Iman, said she took Monday off after she could not find gas, adding four co-workers used public transportation to make it to the office.