… as NIPCO MD hails supply situation for this week when compared to Past week
The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has blamed the current nation-wide fuel scarcity on multiple factors, including logistic constraints arising from the offloading of petroleum products from Mother vessels into Daughter vessels rather than direct discharge to tanks. Chief Executive Officer of NMDPRA, Mr. Farouk Ahmed, stated this on Wednesday when he made an unscheduled inspection visit to some petroleum products coastal depots at Apapa, Lagos, to monitor supply and distribution situations at the depots.
Some of the depots he visited included TotalEnergies, NIPCO, Mobil, Conoil, and Honeywell.
Ahmed assured Nigerians of hitch-free supply of petrol during the yuletide season and beyond, noting that there is more than enough stock onshore and in depots across the country to meet the country’s need.
He said NNPC had imported adequate petrol and had enough stock on shuttle vessels coming into depots across the country, urging Nigerians to be calm as the queues in filling stations would be a thing of the past in no distant time.
“As you can see, the depots we have visited so far, they have been very active loading their trucks and unloading them massively and almost the lowest load out depot we visited was the one that says they are doing between 70-120 trucks per day,” he added.
Responding to a question about punitive measures against marketers selling above the official pump price, Ahmed said the authority was yet to ascertain if the allegations were true.
He stated, “Of course, we have information that they are selling above official price, but the record that we saw in terms of actual records in their finances, showed that that they are selling at official price.
“But the allegation is that they sell above official price and then, they have different ways of collecting additional profits which is just an allegation, which we will need to really confirm before we take any action. But we are looking at that and we are on top of the situation.”
Speaking also, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NIPCO Plc, Mr. Suresh Kumar, said the company’s opening stock was about 28 million litres as of the time of the agency’s visit, stressing that unlike last week, the stock situation has drastically improved.
Kumar said, “I can say that last week, supply was a bit challenged. As at today, even the number of ships at Apapa has increased. We have like three ships in Jetty now and we are expecting two more to come.
“So in the days to come, we feel that this 28 million stock will be improved to like 50 to 55 million litres. We have been doing five million litres per day and we expect this trend to continue for the next one week.”
On his part, Managing Director, 11 Plc (formerly Mobil Nigeria Plc), Mr. Tunji Oyebanji, opined that to address the fuel scarcity in the country, marketers should load more at a period when the demand for petroleum products was high until every consumer was satisfied.
He said, “The panic buying is being aggravated whenever there is scarcity in the country. We have to load more because anyone who used to buy little is now buying more because of the fuel scarcity situation. We have to load more till we have calmness.”
Olusola Bello