PETROL station owners yesterday called off an indefinite Cyprus-wide strike after the interior minister agreed to review and impose stricter restrictions on licences for new stations.
The petrol station owners want to restrict the number of petrol stations – they say there are over 300 – so they can remain viable.
On Thursday afternoon they announced an all-out indefinite strike, after their peers in the Famagusta district shut down shop because a licence was issued for a new petrol station on the Paralimni-Ayia Napa road. Motorists formed queues to fill up their tanks on Thursday night but operators stopped their plans yesterday afternoon, when Interior Minister Eleni Mavrou met with them and agreed to review 29 licences issued over the past two years.
“We will meticulously examine the licences issued recently… wherever there are any irregularities we will also take necessary measures,” Mavrou said.
Mavrou agreed to revoke any licences contravening the principles of “necessity and viability,” the petrol station owners’ association said.
The deputy head of the petrol station owners’ association Stathis Spartiatis said that they would specify those principles in a meeting next week but will include restrictions on the numbers of petrol stations, bearing in mind how many stations there are in a given area.
This will also impact new licences.
A petrol station needs to sell 3.8 million litres of fuel a year to be viable, Spartiatis said.
The association has previously said petrol stations earn between 1.0 cent and 4.0 cent per litre – the remainder goes to the government — placing the upper end of petrol stations’ revenue at €152,000 a year before expenses.
Spartiatis said that because there are too many petrol stations, most now sell 3.2 million litres a year, which at 4.0 cent a litre earned would come to €128,000.
“In addition to the 29 licences already issued, there are also 45 pending with town planning and between 20 to 25 licences pending with local authorities. You realise that if they are all approved, there’ll be over 400 of us,” he said.
“Then, in a few years stations will start shutting down,” he added.
Asked about the roughly 150 unlicensed petrol stations on the island, Spartiatis said that that matter had to do with a bureaucratic system requiring a new licence whenever they change anything to do with a station, from getting a new pump to changing a window.
However, even when petrol stations violate health and safety regulations, shutting them down is tricky.
A petrol station caused a fuel leak in Larnaca last year, but was reopened in September after Larnaca mayor Andreas Louroudjiadis said the legal framework prevented him from ordering the station to close.
Although local authorities said the station was safe, parliament’s environment committee has said they need to update the 1968 law but are waiting for legal services to finish processing a bill.
Meanwhile, Paphos police had to break up a scuffle yesterday when three petrol station owners used their tanker trucks to block the entrance to another station that was operating normally.
