Month: June 2020

As consumers across the country face difficulties due to petrol shortage, the government is currently contemplating completely deregulating pricing and marketing of petrol. According to a report published in Dawn, the government is considering doing away with uniform pricing of petrol and deregulating it in line with other petroleum products like HOBC which are already deregulated. Recently OMC’s have come under severe criticism for their alleged collusive behavior that has seen the price of hi-octane blending component (HOBC), to increase to Rs148-160 per litre. While the government slashed petrol prices…

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Over the weekend, OPEC and its allying oil-producing countries agreed to extend oil production cuts for another month in an effort to boost the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the prior agreement set in April, the 23-member group began curbing production by 9.7 million barrels per day on May 1, which was slated to extend through the end of June. The cuts would then begin to taper off. From July through the end of 2020, 7.7 million barrels per day would be taken offline, followed by…

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ISLAMABAD: Germany will provide technical assistance, worth Rs700 million, to Pakistan in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency. An agreement was signed between Secretary Economic Affairs Noor Ahmed and Ambassador of Germany to Pakistan Bernhard according to which Germany will provide technical assistance to Pakistan under the Pakistan-Germany Development Programme, worth 4 million euros or Rs700 million. The technical assistance will be provided under the project titled, “Promotion of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Concepts in Cities and Industries,” which is one of the priority areas of the Government…

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A project described as the U.K.’s first consumer-owned wind farm has been launched, as the way people power their homes continues to change. In an announcement Monday, London based start-up Ripple Energy said the Graig Fatha wind farm in Wales would be “owned by the consumers it supplies.” The one turbine, 2.5 megawatt facility is set to come online in 2021 and Ripple Energy has partnered with two other firms, Octopus Energy and Co-op Energy, to send electricity from the facility to people’s homes. Customers will need to be on…

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Swarms of locusts spreading across Pakistan are emerging as a bigger threat to the economy than the coronavirus pandemic, with the pests threatening farm output, livelihoods and food security. The locust-invasion now covers an area of 57 million hectares in a country with a total crop area of 23 million hectares, said Falak Naz, director general of crop protection at the Ministry of Food Security and Research. While not all the areas infested now are crop lands, the insects are moving fast, he said. Agriculture is the second-biggest sector in…

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