About 10 percent of the country’s 9,400 gasoline stations were forced to shut down due to low demand amid the enhanced community quarantine.
“The retailers, at least 10 percent of them in areas where there are no people passing by because of the ECQ, they don’t fuel up and buy so it is better commercially that they shut down for now,” Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said over the weekend.
“Around 10 percent of retailers as reported by the players are on shutdown,” Cusi said.
Despite the shutdown, Cusi said the oil companies committed to serve their customers.
“The gas stations will continue to provide service. We will make sure that there is adequate supply,” the energy chief said.
Cusi said oil prices had gone down in the international market, even reaching negative levels.
“There is no more storage to put the oil and it would be more expensive to stop the oil wells. It’s like the generation companies, they have to continue operation because it would be hard to go offline and harder to shut down and restart,” Cusi said.