Vessel delay worsens fuel scarcity
Gbenga Lawal
Vessel delay worsens fuel scarcity fuel scarcity in the country
may not end anytime soon as many filling stations and depots in Lagos
did not have Premium Motor Spirit on Tuesday, while queues of desperate
motorists grew longer at few stations selling the product.
Our correspondent gathered that vessels
conveying petrol, which came into the country between Monday and
Tuesday, would not be able to discharge until Thursday due to logistics
issues.
According to a source, two new vessels,
Mt. Mersk Kalea and Mt, Alizea, carried 21 million metric tonnes of
petrol and berthed at the Apapa jetty.
In Lagos, at most filling stations
belonging to independent marketers, a litre of the product was sold for
between N120 and N250 instead of the N86.50 official pump price, while
black market hawkers sold it for as high as N400 per litre.
Many commuters were seen struggling to
get commercial vehicles to different destinations, even as many
transport operators increased their fares by 100 per cent or more.
On the Otedola Estate and Berger end of
the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Mobil, Capital Oil and Oando filling
stations had long queues of desperate motorists and other customers,
which spilled onto the road and caused serious gridlock.
The long queues at the filling stations
forced many motorists to resort to the black market, whose operators
were having a field day as they sold the product at exorbitant prices.
A source, who is an official of an
independent marketer, who confirmed the arrival of the vessels, said,
“But discharge had not started because they have to determine those to
get the product and they have to do all the formal documentation. There
is still documentation for naval clearance; there is documentation for
the DPR clearance; the DPR will also go on board since it is an imported
vessel.
“They cannot start to discharge now. The
earliest time they can do that is probably tomorrow (Wednesday) night
or Thursday morning. Because of the subsidy component, the Petroleum
Products Pricing Regulatory Agency will want to see whether it is in
line with the approval given.
“So, those are the things that will
actually delay the discharge of the vessels. It should take a minimum of
two days. So, people may not feel any vessel is discharging until the
weekend. The logistic issue is now the problem.”
One of the marketers, Capital Oil, said,
“This is to inform our valued customers and the general public that the
NNPC has brought in enough fuel cargos into the country.
“Consequently, Capital Oil has commenced
massive 24-hour loading in a bid to meeting the NNPC’s target of
eliminating fuel queues nationwide within the next few days.
“We also wish to discourage Nigerians
from panic-buying and hoarding, while calling on everyone to stop
patronising the activities of black marketeers.”
The Executive Secretary, Depot and
Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, said
members of the body were in the process of submitting their papers to
the Central Bank of Nigeria for foreign exchange to enable them to bring
in more cargos.
“Quite a number of our members have not
had anything to bring in for a while now. In the first quarter, only 10
of them were given allocation and the rest had nothing to do; they were
just paying salaries without having things to do, except probably a few
that had diesel. So, now that they have been given the PMS, they have
started working on getting the products in,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Independent Petroleum
Marketers Association of Nigeria on Tuesday debunked allegation that it
was responsible for the current fuel scarcity in the country.
The National Operations Controller,
IPMAN, Mr. Mike Osatuyi, said a statement to that effect was credited to
Mr. Lawson Ngoa, who he described as an agent of the Ministry of
Petroleum Resources brought in to mediate in the internal crisis of the
association.
He said, “While the intervention of the
Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, in resolving the
internal crisis in IPMAN is appreciated and commendable, the
forefathers, past presidents, leaders of IPMAN and the general members
of IPMAN nationwide will not allow Mr. Lawson Ngoa, who is not a
marketer or an IPMAN member, to use IPMAN’s name as a shield to defend
or protect a system failure of the NNPC.
“It is pure defamation of IPMAN name to
go on air that IPMAN has accepted the responsibility for the scarcity of
petroleum products and that Nigerians should hold IPMAN responsible for
the scarcity.”
Also on Tuesday, Kachikwu said queues would disappear from filling stations in Abuja and Lagos by Thursday.
This was despite the fact that Abuja and its environs had queues in front of some filling stations on Tuesday.
The minister also noted that based on
the price modulation technology adopted by the PPPRA and the trend in
the prices of crude oil globally, a new pump price for petrol might be
announced in May.
Kachikwu, who said these when he paid a
visit to the headquarters of the PPPRA in Abuja, further stated that the
queues would disappear in states like Sokoto, Kano, Rivers, Katsina and
Delta by the weekend.
He said, “Today, we have fuel queues and
it is a complete nightmare for me. I feel for every Nigerian who is at
the filling station. And there isn’t still sufficient reason why
Nigerians should suffer this much. We just need to create the right
policies. As hard as they are, as difficult as they come, we need to
make the right policies to leave a legacy in the petroleum sector.
“Hopefully by tomorrow (Wednesday) or
Thursday, the fuel queues in Abuja should be over. Hopefully, the same
thing will happen to Lagos, and a day after, by the weekend, we should
see Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Port Harcourt and Warri getting enough
products.”
Kachikwu stated that the government was
working out measures to have strategic reserves for the country in order
to forestall any form of petrol scarcity in future.
He said, “But really, in some places, we
do not have queues as such; rather, people are paying double the price
to get the product. It is not right, but what it says to you is that
obviously, there are some things that we need to watch out for if people
are not buying our product rightly, we should be able to check and
restrain that.
“However, what concerns me more is
letting the present queues go out.” On the price modulation mechanism,
the minister said in May, the government might come up with new pump
prices for petrol going by the trend in crude oil prices globally.
“The price modulation that we’ve put in
place will enable us to check prices. The government has not returned
petrol subsidy. The real truth is that in the first three months of
doing the price modulation, our over-recoveries enabled us to save quite
a lot of money and that is going to fund the gap that we see in April;
but for May, we will have to adjust the prices to match the current
trend,” Kachikwu said.
Earlier in her address, the Acting
Executive Secretary, PPPRA, Mrs. Sotonye Iyoyo, told the minister that
the non-existence of a sustainable strategic reserves policy for
petroleum products as a security against emergency situation in the
country was a challenge to the agency.
Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir
el-Rufai, on Tuesday banned the sale of petroleum products in jerrycans
by black market operators across the 23 local government council of the
state.
The governor, who announced the ban
through his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwa, said
the measure became necessary because of the hardships caused by the
current scarcity of petrol.
He said it was a collective decision of the State Security Council to ban the sale of the product in jerrycans across the state.
According to him, the security council
based its decision on legal and security considerations, as well as
environmental hazards that petroleum products in jerrycans can cause.
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