Sawt Falasteen - Myanmar drivers scramble for fuel as Mideast war cuts supply

The US-Israeli attacks on Iran over the weekend and wider war across the Middle East have hampered oil supplies from the resource-rich region and sent global prices rocketing.

Myanmar imports 90 percent of its fuel oil, according to 2024 figures, and has long suffered from a fragile energy supply chain owing to the civil war consuming the country since the military staged a coup five years ago.

The junta has announced half of private vehicles will be ordered off the roads each day, based on licence plate numbers, starting this weekend in order to preserve fuel.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said Wednesday that Myanmar has 40 days' worth of fuel stockpiles.

The traffic curbs were meant to ensure the country is "able to get through the oil difficulties facing the world by using it systematically", he added in an audio message to reporters.

But in the largest city Yangon, an AFP journalist saw roughly 50 vehicles queued outside each of the five petrol stations they visited on Wednesday.

One south Yangon gas station was shut, with a handwritten notice telling customers fuel tankers were queueing to dock in the harbour and "petrol sales are suspended until they arrive".

Neighbouring Thailand has said it secured two months' worth of oil supplies but would suspend exports to conserve its holdings.

Elsewhere in the region, petrol stations in the capital of Laos -- which imports nearly all of its oil and gasoline from Thailand, according to official data -- were packed with queues of idling vehicles throughout Monday.

Bangkok swiftly announced an exemption for Laos, easing the panic-buying, and by Wednesday morning the lines of cars and motorbikes had disappeared from forecourts in Vientiane.

But in the Myanmar frontier town of Tachileik, an AFP reporter saw signs cross-border supplies from Thailand had been cut -- with some petrol stations shut on Wednesday after an up-to-threefold price spike the day before.

Outside the gates of one closed filling station, dozens of motorbike riders still queued expectantly.

Electric vehicles, buses, taxis, cargo vehicles, emergency services and garbage trucks will be exempt from the junta's new rules, but it is not clear how they will be enforced with huge parts of the country in the hands of rebel factions.

D.Qudsi--SF-PST