Of road accidents claiming precious lives and property, the ones involving oil tankers can be the most fatal. The flammable cargo on the vehicles if not handled properly can create havoc at the accident site. Unfortunate events such as the Bahawalpur incident can be averted by ensuring compliance of fuel hauling vehicles to stringent safety and security criteria and quality assurance at par with global standards. A good number of accidents usually take place due to technical failures of fuel transportation vehicles. Twenty-two of the 70 accidents between January 2017 to March 2018 occurred due to avoidable technical faults in the vehicles.
The country's oil marketing sector, led by Pakistan State Oil (PSO), is working in close coordination with the regulatory bodies, Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) and National Highways Authority, to adopt high standards in safety and environmental protection in transportation of petroleum products. Apart from pipeline network and railways, the major portion of petroleum products is transported across the country through roads network.
The regulatory bodies and OMCs primarily focus on safety of the cargo on the road. OMCs use huge tank lorries for fast and convenient fuel transportation. The Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority's 'Technical Standards for the Petroleum Industry' (Road Transport Vehicles, Containers and Equipment) chalk out the optimum quality standards and calibration of these vehicles, necessary for their smooth functioning as well as mitigating the risk of harm to life and property.
Ogra has meticulously charted the detailed requirements for the transportation fleets of OMCs, which would certainly enhance the overall quality of the fleet and improve public safety. The regulatory body has made it mandatory for the OMCs to optimize their transportation systems to meet these requirements.
Ogra has chalked out standards ranging from safety features in the transportation vehicles like fire glass and fire extinguishers to correct calibration of weight and dimensions of the vehicles. It accounts for optimum performance and correct adjustment of various parts of the vehicles including engine, brakes, gearbox and clutch, steering, suspension, wheels, excel to weight ratio, load to weight ratio and more. Ensuring correct adjustment of all the essential parts of the vehicles hauling thousands of litres of flammable products would largely mitigate the risk of accidents, besides enabling the vehicle to function smoothly under varying geographic as well as weather conditions.
PSO is the largest oil marketing company of the country with 54 percent share in the industry where it provides for a range of fuel requirements of its individual as well as corporate clients including a number of large corporations. The company moves the majority of the fuel through roads and depends heavily on the agility of its road transportation system, consisting of around 8000 tank lorries. Statistics suggest that oil transport on PSO's contract makes more than 1,000,000 annual trips from different locations in the country with major which is transported from Karachi to upcountry.
Besides ensuring safety and protection, PSO's latest fuel transportation fleet will be instrumental in exploring the prospective cross border trade with China in the wake of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project which necessitates compliance to international standards. Now that the country's overall socioeconomic conditions are improving, the future heralds bright prospects for Pakistan's oil marketing sector. The sector can start gearing up to harness these prospects by equipping itself by the best infrastructure and transportation systems fully compliant with global standards. It would not only benefit them in the long run but foster safety and security and environmental protection to create a lot of value for the society.
PSO continues to undertake aggressive measures to modernize its road transportation system by inducting the latest and state of the art transportation vehicles into its fleet. These vehicles support the most innovative and best in class safety and security features and therefore set a higher benchmark for the OMC sector of the country in safety of the crew and public on road.
It has also been reported recently that people with vested interest in oil transportation system of the country, continue to create hurdles against writ of the state by sabotaging the newly inducted vehicles in PSO's fleet system. Around five of such incidents have been reported in recent weeks from Karachi and Interior Sindh where criminal elements went against the State's will by attacking highly flammable fuel laden tank lorries posing a direct threat to lives of commuters and people living in nearby areas of the attack locations. This is time for state authorities to play an active role against such criminal elements who want to take the oil transportation system in their own hands leaving development of the economy and wellbeing of its people a hostage to their wishful anti-state thinking.