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The Senate Standing committee on Petroleum on Friday took notice of the disparity in Petroleum Prices in comparison to the Int. market which has gone down whereas prices in Pakistan are continuously increasing, Chairman OGRA argued that we need to understand the mechanism before deciding deregulation of prices of the petroleum products he further said that 55 pc of the market share is with the PSO and their prices are the bench mark while the rest 33 players cannot cartelize the market price as their market shares are less. It was also informed that the 13 pc incidentals including premium, insurance, testing cost, exchange losses are also paid by the PSO. Senator Fida Muhammad said that most major Gulf markets tracked lower oil prices on 15 August as 97$/ Barrel which exceeded to 127 $/ Barrel for Pakistan and lamented that no difference was impacted on the oil price in the country even after the drop. The committee was informed that the 10 pc custom duty on diesel is Rs 22.21. The levy on petroleum is Rs 37.42 and Rs 7.58 on diesel with no GST on either of them. The committee was informed that the levy charges tend to increase by 13 Rs for petrol and Rs 33 for diesel. The committee was informed that the OGRA checks the arithmetic accuracy of the price determined by the OMC as per fixed formula given by GoP, worldwide 60 pc of the countries have deregulated where OMCs fix and announces the price on competitive basis with some obligation of maintaining minimum stock level, rest of the 40 pc have regulated prices regime and moved towards deregulation including Pakistan.