Fuel problems in Ethiopia
 

When we got to Ethiopia we were surprised how hard it was to buy petrol for our motorbikes. There are many service stations around but all of them had 'Petrol finished' and only sold diesel. On our route it effected the South. Coming from Moyale, Kenya, the first petrol stations to sell petrol were Konso and Shashemene.
But it also affects the north. There was no petrol between Addis and Gondar and between Gondar and Shire (Inda Silasi). Black market fuel is available. But only in very small quantities (<5 litres) for double the usual price (>$2 per litre). Often even the black market was sold out.
If you travel through Ethiopia it might be worthwile considering this. The further away from Addis you go the harder it is to find petrol. Diesel is available everywhere.

Interesting to see that this isn't a one-off occurrance. We noticed the same thing in 2008 and it was the only time on the entire trip that we were well and truly close to running out of fuel on Audrey's F650. Every gas station we encountered said they only had diesel but the next station (always 15 kilometres further) would have gasoline. When we finally did get to a station with gasoline the F650 took exactly as much as the stated capacity to the tank. :mchappy:

We travelled Ethiopia in early 2011 and it was a huge issue to get petrol. We had to beg, borrow and harass petrol station attendants for some petrol. Same old story, only diesel available and the petrol was dirty and we could only buy 5L or so at a time.

We filtered it through coffee filter bags into our 15L jerry cans we carried on the bikes.
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/i-Mtwq...-Mtwq3p7-S.jpg