Fuel Scarcity Subsides As NNPC Evacuates 450.92m Litres In 1 Week

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has said that an average of 64.42 million liters of premium motor spirit (PMS) were evacuated on a daily basis between January 28 and February 3, bringing total evacuation to 450.92 million litres for the week.

This disclosure is made in a data dubbed ‘Weekly National PMS Evacuation and Dispatch’ report posted on its official Twitter account yesterday.

This is as queues for PMS, popularly called petrol, cleared suddenly in most parts of Abuja, Niger, Nasarawa and other states since last week Wednesday.

Virtually all the major filling stations that used to have long queues before, were seen without queues as from Wednesday, as most of them dispensed petrol to the cars sighted in their various outlets.

Recall that the group chief executive officer of the NNPC, Mele Kyari on the NTA News Network that the current fuel crisis in the country was not a result of supply challenges, but of distribution challenges.

He said, “We do not have a supply problem because as we speak now, we have over 28 days of supply even if we evacuate up to 60 million liters of PMS every day. We have a distribution problem that comes up as a result of the shift in the cost of logistics in our business taking fuel from the mother vessels to the terminals into trucks to the fuel stations.” 

According to the report, Pinnacle depot had the highest load-out at 57.28 million liters, Aiteo had 28.29 million liters, MRS Limited had 24.54 million liters. Meanwhile, Masters had 22.66 million liters, NIPCO had 22.45 million liters, Bluefin had 20.08 million liters. 26 other depots recorded between 5 to 16 million liters each. Also, 29 other load-out depots recorded less than 5 million liters each.  

Fuel Dispatch for some states: According to the report, 1,251 fuel trucks dispatched fuel to Lagos state during the period highlighted. 847 fuel trucks were dispatched to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and 372 fuel trucks were dispatched to Oyo state.

Meanwhile, 311 fuel trucks were dispatched to Ogun state, 268 fuel trucks were sent to Kano, 284 fuel trucks were sent to Delta state, 22 fuel trucks were sent to Ebonyi state and 159 fuel trucks were sent to Edo state. 

Last week, the fuel scarcity crisis led to protests in some parts of Edo state as Nigerians were frustrated by the unavailability of fuel as well as the high costs that rose up to N500 per liter in some filling stations across the country.  

Kyari had also promised that the challenges would soon be over. He said that in the sense of recovering costs, market players tend to escalate arbitrage to unreasonable levels.  

However, the recent meeting held with stakeholders across the value chain yielded some fruits as all stakeholders are now willing to work together to ensure that normalcy is restored as regards fuel purchases. He said there is an understanding that some of these depots where challenges occur are tackled and logistics costs are handled effectively. 

By Friday when the minister of state, Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, inspected some stations in the federal capital territory, there was considerable improvement in the supply of fuel in most filling stations.

“A lot of things have been done. All hands have been on deck, the NNPC Limited, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), and stakeholders in the supply chain have come together to ensure that the problem is resolved.

“This is not the time for us to apportion  blames as  the most important thing is that the problem has been resolved and you can see now the queues are no longer there, at least in the FCT we are going around to ensure they have  disappeared,” he said

On marketers who are selling above approved price, especially in other states, he said it was a regulatory issue and within the purview of the NMDPRA  to sanction those marketers.

Sylva added that the authority would tackle the issue.

Speaking on the conflicting ex-depot price, he described it as commercial details under the purview of the NNPC Ltd., saying he would ensure that  all those conflicting problems were resolved.

The minister noted that the importation of the petroleum product is a problem because a lot of people cannot access the foreign exchange.

“The fuel situation also has nothing to do with politics.  Anything,  including natural disasters like flood can trigger the fuel distribution hindrance because they are natural factors we are not in control of.

“A lot of the problems that caused fuel scarcity and queues are not within our control there are also all kinds of people who are ready to take advantage of situations and caused problems by seeking for opportunity to make money, hoard and smuggle the product.

“These require intervention of the security agencies and the recent engagement with them definitely helped,” he’d said.