Maputo – The Mozambican government has again insisted there is no fuel shortage in the country, even as long queues of vehicles continue to build up at filling stations in Maputo and other cities for the second week running.
Government spokespersons have repeated the same message every day for the past week, saying there is sufficient petrol and diesel in the country to meet current demand, while pointing fingers at retailers for hoarding. But the assurances have done little to ease the situation on the ground.
On Saturday morning, brigades from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy fanned out across Maputo filling stations to find out why they keep running dry. According to the independent daily O Pais, ministerial teams measured fuel levels in tanks, confronted station managers and demanded to see paperwork showing how much fuel each station had purchased. 
National Director of Hydrocarbons and Fuel Felisbela Conhete was blunt when she spoke to reporters. “No, no, no! There is no fuel crisis, because we have fuel! The fuel is in the ports,” she said.
She described what she called abnormal behaviour at the pumps. “Although there is fuel in the tanks, this fuel is apparently not reaching the pumps. So we have set up teams to check whether the amounts the retailers have requested are really reaching the fuel pumps,” Conhete said, alleging that distribution companies had provoked the crisis and threatening tough measures against them.
Filling stations in the Maputo area get their fuel from the oceanic terminal at the port of Matola, which Conhete said means there should be no reason for shortages in the Maputo and Matola areas.
“We are here to understand what is happening in the distribution chain of this fuel,” she said. “At this pump, we note that there are some discrepancies between what was requested and what actually arrived at the pumps. We have taken note, we have the records, we know which distributor supplies this pump.”
She promised action. “We shall interact with this distributor. We shall work to find out why this fuel is really not being distributed.”
“These queues make no sense,” Conhete said, “because the fuel has left the port. So our job is to find out where the bottleneck is.” She warned that the ministry would be “implacable” towards fuel distributors found to be breaking the rules.
On the informal rationing being applied at many filling stations, where each motorist is limited to buying 1,000 meticais worth of fuel, equivalent to about 12 litres, Conhete said this was a decision made by station managers themselves and had nothing to do with the government. Stations were receiving less fuel than they had ordered, she explained, and managers had decided to limit purchases so that every customer could receive at least some fuel. She believed the rationing would end once stations received their full orders.
News that the Strait of Hormuz had reopened spread quickly on Saturday and briefly raised hopes that the crisis might be over. Those hopes were short-lived, however, after the United States refused to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, forcing the Strait to close again.
