Crisis-hit Sri Lanka woos foreign oil firms amid fuel shortages

REUTERS: Sri Lanka canvassed oil companies in petroleum-producing nations yesterday to import and sell their products in the Indian Ocean Island, opening its market to resolve acute shortages of fuel during its worst economic crisis in decades.

Depleted foreign exchange reserves have left the nation of 22 million unable to pay for imports of essential items from fuel to food and medicines.

“An advertisement was published today calling for expression of interest (EOI) for oil companies to import, distribute and sell petroleum products in Sri Lanka,” Kanchana Wijesekera, the Power and Energy Minister, said on Twitter yesterday. The news follows Sri Lanka’s decision last month to allow such imports and sales, as it scrambles to ensure sufficient supplies of petrol and diesel.

The approvals for oil firms to be picked in the new process will effectively end a market duopoly involving a subsidiary of India’s state-run Indian Oil Corp.

State-run Ceylon Petroleum Corp (CPC), which controls about 80 percent of the market with a national network of 1,190 fuel stations, will give a share of its resources and pumps to the new entrants, the government said in its notice.