West Bank fuel crisis prompts PA petrol company plan

Palestinian finance minister Estaphan Salameh has proposed creating a government-owned petrol company as the occupied West Bank faces a severe fuel crisis.

Cars have lined up at petrol stations across the West Bank for nearly two weeks as stations struggle to supply the three million litres of fuel the territory consumes each day. AFP journalists reported Palestinians filling water bottles with fuel to get stranded cars moving again.

Salameh told reporters in Ramallah on Wednesday that the proposal was for a company “fully owned by the state”. He said he had met Palestinian industry leaders to discuss reforming the Petroleum Authority, which regulates the sector and handles fuel purchasing and transportation.

Under the proposal, Salameh said, the Petroleum Authority would keep its regulatory role while the new public company would handle purchasing and transportation, making the government more agile in future crises.

The West Bank imports all its oil from Israel, sometimes legally and sometimes smuggled. Salameh said there was smuggling but that its scale was not known, and said the current crisis had also led to stockpiling and a black market for petrol.

Salameh also urged Palestinians to pay for fuel digitally rather than in cash. The West Bank largely uses the Israeli shekel, but Israel has in recent months refused to accept cash from the West Bank, leaving some companies short of digital money for payments.

Palestinian businessman Samir Hullileh said the Palestinian Authority’s fiscal problems were the real cause of the fuel crisis. He said he did not believe a public petrol company would solve the current crisis or future ones.