Adetola Bademosi examines the real issues behind the current fuel crisis and what the stakeholders are doing behind the scenes to remedy the situation.
Early in February, the country was hit by fuel scarcity occasioned by the importation of contaminated Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) into the country. This led to queues at petrol stations in Lagos, Abuja and some other states across the country while also boosting black market operations.
Several days into the crisis and amidst public outcry over the adulterated Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) in circulation, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) said the flawed product had been withdrawn from the market.
The management of NMDPRA in an official statement confirmed that the methanol content in the withdrawn product was above Nigeria’s specification hence, to ensure vehicular and equipment safety, the limited quantity of the impacted product has been, “isolated and withdrawn from the market, including the loaded trucks in transit”.
Methanol, it should be noted, is a regular additive in petrol and usually blended in an acceptable quantity.
As the scarcity intensified and queues at petrol stations grew longer the Nigerian National Petroleum (NNPC) Ltd disclosed that over 2.3 billion litres of PMS will arrive the country by the end of February. As of February 15, the company claimed it had over 1 billion litres of petrol in stock, while also assuring that product being dispensed at various filling stations in the country was safe.
According to the NNPC Group Executive Director, Downstream, Adetunji Adeyemi, the arrival of the over 2.3billion litre of PMS would restore sufficiency level above the national target of 30 days.
“The NNPC understands the current fuel supply disruptions in many parts of the country, which was caused by the discovery and subsequent quarantine of methanol-blended cargoes of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly referred to as petrol.
“To address the situation, over 2.3 billion litres will arrive in the country between now and the end of February 2022. This will restore the sufficiency level above the national target of 30 days,” he had promised.
But despite various assurances by relevant government players, the situation has instead aggravated as the commodity now sells at higher prices in filling stations while queues have continued to build up with increasing transport fares.
Private Depots Owners feeding off situation-Marketers
In the course of the week, the NMDPRA had independently visited some petrol stations within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) which were either deliberately hoarding the product, selling above pump price or causing artificial queues in a bid to restore sanity.
But another problem that reared its head was the accusation by the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) that private depots owners (PDOs) are reaping off others and taking advantage of the situation by jacking up ex-depot price from N142-N143 to between N159-N160 per litre.
According to IPMAN’s spokesperson, Mr. Chinedu Ukadike, the development has further discouraged marketers from buying products even as they await supply from NNPC and thus worsening the situation.
“Some PDOs are also profiteering from the situation. The product that we were buying at N142/litre they are now using second to third bulk sellers to sell it at N159/N160 per litre. If we buy product at N160, how much would we sell in our filling stations?
“So this thing has dragged our legs from going to buy products, but if the products are now deposited in the inland depots of the PPMC, we will have confident enough to go to the depots of PPMC and buy products at government approved rates,” he explained, adding that the reason the scarcity has become protracted is because the NNPC does not have petroleum products in its inland depots.
“Some of the inland depots of NNPC do not have products and some private depots don’t also have the product that can be put to use but because of this contaminated fuel there is a little breach in the supply chain. The product that NNPC has is not enough for the sufficiency period,” he explained, noting that another reason for the scarcity is insufficient tank reserves to blend the adulterated products.
“I also want to let you know that some of our PDOs do not have enough tank reservations to be able to keep these two products [adulterated fuel and clean one] side by side so it is also pertinent that the NNPC takes the product to their blending plant and see what they can be able to do with it while they will clean up those tanks. These things will take a period of time.”
Meanwhile, independent findings conducted by Sunday Tribune showed that some filling stations now sell PMS at prices over N200 per litre while same product at black market now sells between N400 and N500 compared to previous weeks when it sold at N300.
As a result, commuters now pay double for transport fare. For instance a distance that would normally cost N150 now goes for N350.
502million litres average fuel load outs in January, February
Amidst the crisis, the latest data from the NMDPRA showed that between January 3 to 26th February, an average total of 502million litres of PMS was evacuated out of which 63.7million litres was loaded out from depots between February 21st and 26th.
It said during the period in February, a total of 381.9million litres were evacuated where 80 per cent of these took place at the top 20 high loading depots.
It listed the top 20 high load out depots to include: Pinnacle-Lekki, Aiteo, A.A Rano, A.Y.M safari limited, Prudent, 11 Plc, Rain oil Lagos, AVIDOR, Fynefield, Bulk Strategic, Matrix, Keonamex, pinnacle, NIPCO, Swift, Total Apapa, TSL, Sobaz Nig Ltd, Mainland, Ardova.
and then