The government has notified an immediate ban on the import of furnace oil and has directed all the refineries to utilise billions of rupees worth of deemed duty, which they collect on the sale of petroleum products, for the upgrade of their plants.The government also instructed the refineries to immediately reduce the production of furnace oil to the minimum level and ink commercial agreements with power producers for the utilisation of their furnace oil storage capacity."In future, all the refineries will ensure that the production of furnace oil is at the minimum as a byproduct of crude oil processing," a notification said.The government told the refineries to undertake work on building additional storage facilities as well as utilise the proceeds of deemed duty for upgrade and modernisation of their plants.It has imposed the ban on furnace oil import with immediate effect, except for K-Electric.Earlier, top functionaries of the government were surprised to know that though the country had stocks of 200,000 tons of furnace oil, still it was being imported for consumption in power plants. On the other hand, furnace oil was not being lifted from local refineries which were on the brink of shutdown.