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.
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