ISLAMABAD: A government inquiry into the fire that killed 14 newborn babies at a hospital in Islamabad has concluded that the disaster was the product of “systemic and institutional failure”, with a localised electrical fault the most probable trigger for a blaze that overwhelmed a nursery in a matter of minutes.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Constitutional Court has summoned the complete case record concerning former prime minister Imran Khan’s transfer to a private hospital, stepping into a matter that has been before the Supreme Court and setting up a fresh test of which institution now holds authority over Pakistan’s constitutional disputes.

Pakistan fuel prices climb for seventh straight session as oil rally persists

By Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan raised retail fuel prices for a seventh consecutive cycle on Tuesday, pushing petrol to its highest level since the current daily-pricing mechanism began in July, as the war between the US and Iran kept crude markets on edge and complicated the government’s push to cushion consumers from the shock.

The Petroleum Division said petrol would rise Rs4.10 a litre to Rs384.34, effective Wednesday, while high-speed diesel — the fuel underpinning Pakistan’s freight, agriculture and power-generation sectors — will climb Rs6.41 to Rs415.83.

The increase caps a steep run under the government’s daily pricing mechanism. Petrol has risen in six of the past seven trading days, climbing from Rs345.87 on September 7 to Wednesday’s Rs384.34 — a gain of nearly Rs38.50, or 11%, in just over a week. Diesel has moved even more sharply over the same stretch, up more than Rs45 from Rs370.41 to Rs415.83.

Even so, both fuels remain well below the all-time peaks reached in early April, when supply fears first gripped the market. Diesel hit Rs520.35 a litre on April 3 after climbing from Rs281 when the conflict erupted on February 28. Petrol peaked the same day at Rs458.41, having started March at Rs266 — a single-day jump of Rs137.24 that remains the largest one-time fuel price increase in Pakistan’s history.

The government continues to collect Rs114 a litre in taxes on petrol and Rs100 on diesel, levies it has kept in place even as pump prices have swung sharply in both directions this year.

Daily Pricing Mechanism Under Pressure

Wednesday’s adjustment is the latest test of a formula introduced July 17, when Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik said the cabinet had authorized the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority to set fuel prices daily rather than weekly, citing the volatility unleashed by renewed fighting between Iran and the US. The shift replaced a system in place since early March that combined weekly reviews with fuel-conservation measures amid fears of supply disruption from the Middle East conflict; the federal government had also introduced targeted fuel subsidies in April.

OGRA calculates the daily rate using a seven-working-day rolling average of the Platts Arab Gulf Means Price, a benchmark that has itself been racing higher: the international reference price for petrol jumped from $112.81 to $125.35 a barrel between September 12 and September 15 alone, with diesel’s benchmark rising from $112.34 to $115.84 over the same window.

Petrol, used mainly in motorcycles, rickshaws and small private vehicles, weighs most heavily on middle- and lower-middle-income households. Diesel’s reach is broader still, powering the heavy trucking fleet, power plants and industrial generators that keep goods and electricity moving across the country. Together, the two products dominate Pakistan’s fuel market, with combined monthly sales of 700,000 to 800,000 tonnes, dwarfing the roughly 10,000 tonnes of kerosene sold each month.

Relief Scheme Set for Nationwide Rollout

The price increase lands just as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s fuel-relief program is due to expand beyond Islamabad. The office of the deputy prime minister said Tuesday the scheme, already running in the capital, would take effect nationwide at midnight on September 16.

Sharif unveiled the program on Sunday, offering a Rs100-a-litre discount to owners of motorcycles, three-wheeled rickshaws and cars with engines up to 800cc — the vehicle classes most exposed to the run-up in pump prices. Under the plan, roughly 10 million two-wheeler owners and 800,000 rickshaw operators will receive the discount on a monthly quota of 20 litres, worth up to Rs2,000 a month. A further one million owners of small cars will get the same per-litre discount on 30 litres monthly, or up to Rs3,000.

The government has pegged the scheme’s total beneficiaries at 11.8 million and its monthly cost to the exchequer at Rs24.6 billion — Rs20 billion for two-wheelers, Rs1.6 billion for three-wheelers and Rs3 billion for small cars.

Officials framed the program as a direct response to the pace of the recent run-up: petrol prices climbed Rs72 a litre, or 24%, between July 1 and September 11, while diesel rose Rs87, or 28%, over the same stretch. With Pakistan reliant on imported crude and refined products for the bulk of its needs, officials said, increases in international prices pass through almost immediately to the pump. That dependence, they said, had left lower-income households facing mounting strain from both fuel costs and the broader inflation they help drive — a dynamic that prompted Sharif to order officials to design targeted relief for the country’s poorest.

Global Supply Fears Intensify

The domestic price pressure has tracked a rapidly deteriorating picture in international oil markets. Brent crude settled at $108.49 a barrel on Tuesday, up $2.81, or 2.66%, while US West Texas Intermediate rose $3.29 to $104.68, as traders weighed a fresh round of supply threats across the Middle East and North Africa.

The latest catalyst was Saudi Arabia’s decision to shut its 1,200-kilometer East-West pipeline, the kingdom’s principal alternative to shipping crude through the Strait of Hormuz, after a drone strike launched from Iraqi territory damaged pumping infrastructure. The line normally carries up to 4 million barrels a day from Saudi Arabia’s eastern oilfields to the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu; Aramco has yet to say how long repairs will take.

Libya added to the strain separately, with its National Oil Corporation confirming that members of the Petroleum Facilities Guard, in the course of a protest, closed a valve on the Hamada-Zawiya pipeline, halting output at three fields. Libya ranked as OPEC’s seventh-largest crude producer in 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The disruptions compound a conflict that has already driven Saudi output to its lowest level since 1990 and left the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea shipping lanes under sustained pressure from Iran-aligned Houthi forces in Yemen. Hamad Hussain, senior climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi targets were shaping investor expectations for how long the disruptions might persist.

For Pakistan, which imports the bulk of its petroleum needs, that uncertainty points to continued pressure on prices — testing how far the government’s daily pricing formula, and its new relief scheme, can absorb the shock before it reaches consumers.

KARACHI: Seven former Australia cricket captains have written directly to foreign minister Penny Wong urging her to press Pakistan’s government over the treatment of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, in an unusually direct intervention by some of the sport’s most decorated figures into the political fate of one of their own.