Sri Lanka has suspended sales of fuel for non-essential vehicles as it faces its worst economic crisis in decades.
For the next two weeks, only buses, trains and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food will be allowed to fill up with fuel.
Schools in urban areas have shut, while officials have told the country's 22 million residents to work from home.
The South Asian nation is in talks over a bailout deal as it struggles to pay for imports such as fuel and food.
Sri Lanka is the first country to take the drastic step in halting sales of fuel to ordinary people "since the 1970s oil crisis, when fuel was rationed in the US and Europe and speed limits introduced to reduce demand", Nathan Piper, head of oil and gas research at Investec, told the BBCFUEL REPORT IN LANKA
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He said the ban underlined the steep rise in oil pricing and limited foreign exchange reserves in Sri Lanka.
Many of the island's residents don't know how they will cope without fuel. There have been long queues at filling stations across Sri Lanka for months.
Chinthaka Kumara, a 29-year-old taxi driver in Colombo, thought the ban would "create more problems for people".
"I'm a daily wage earner. I've been in this queue for three days and I don't know when we will get petrol," he told BBC Sinhala.