Fuel imports continue normally in Lebanon, assures APIC

The president of the Association of Petroleum Importing Companies (APIC), Maroun Shammas, assured L'Orient-Le Jour on Wednesday that fuel imports to Lebanon are continuing at a normal pace despite the security events in the Middle East in recent days, in the shockwave of the war in Gaza.

“Ships are expected almost every day, although carriers are monitoring the situation very closely and are ready to react. No deliveries have been canceled,” he said. He said gasoline and fuel oil stocks were sufficient to cover the country’s needs “for a month if consumption remains at a normal rate and as long as tankers continue to serve the oil terminals on the Lebanese coast,” an assurance he also gave to local news website Leb Economy.

This estimate includes fuel stored at importers, at service stations and at large consumers of fuel oil (hospitals, factories and other institutions). Domestic gas stocks, which are delivered more infrequently, are sufficient for two months.

Already deleterious since the start of the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023 between Israel and the Hamas movement, the situation in Lebanon and the region has become particularly unstable since the end of last week.

On Saturday, a missile crashed near a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Syrian Golan annexed by Israel, killing 12 children. Hezbollah, which exchanges fire daily on the border of southern Lebanon with Israeli forces, denied being behind the attack that Israel attributed to it. In retaliation, the Israeli army targeted a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday evening, killing at least four and wounding dozens. A senior Hezbollah commander, Fouad Shukur, whom Israel claimed to have killed in the strike, is still missing.

On Wednesday morning, the head of Hamas's political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed along with one of his bodyguards in a strike blamed on Israel at his residence in Tehran.

This article originally appeared in French in L'Oreint-Le Jour.