Smaller OMCs take on Ogra over ‘unfair’ pricing

More than two dozen smaller oil marketing companies (OMCs) claim to have suffered massive losses due to unfair petroleum pricing and marketing conditions and lashed out at the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) for its inability to ensure a coherent regulatory environment, causing existential crisis for them. “The entire industry, barring state-run Pakistan State Oil (PSO), is facing existential crisis and this is mainly driven by lack of coherent policy by Ogra,” the Oil Marketing Association of Pakistan (OMAP), representing more than two dozen smaller OMCs, said in a letter to Ogra Chairman Masroor Khan. It said Ogra was required to ensure that all players of the industry get a level playing field, but the industry had been miserably failed by the regulator which has “consistently failed to settle foreign exchange losses adjustment, negative inland freight equalisation margin, pricing, oil companies’ margin revision and other related issues”.