The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) said the country holds sufficient fuel reserves to last through September, as a fresh crude shipment landed and another tanker is due within days.
CPC Managing Director Mayura Neththikumara said a vessel carrying 89,000 metric tons of crude oil from the United States arrived on Wednesday. A second crude tanker is scheduled to dock on 31 May.
Neththikumara said the corporation will hold a meeting next Monday to take a decision on fuel prices for the coming month, but cautioned that no reduction should be expected through September despite recent declines in global oil prices. “In this month or next month, largely until September, a price reduction cannot be expected,” he told reporters, adding that diesel was trading around US$140–150 a barrel against pre-war levels of US$80–90, having peaked at US$290 in April.
The September reserve horizon extends the assurance the corporation gave only a week earlier, when it said stocks were secured through August on the back of US and Middle East crude orders. CPC reiterated on Monday that there was no fuel shortage and blamed queues at some filling stations on false rumours of an imminent price hike.
The supply update lands alongside a tentative US-Iran outline deal that, if signed off by President Donald Trump, would ease pressure on Hormuz tanker freight and insurance premiums — the chokepoint through which the bulk of Sri Lanka’s fuel cargoes transit and the main driver of the Central Bank’s billion-dollar oil bill warning earlier this month.
