Fuel queues won’t disappear till May — Marketers

The queues for petrol in major cities across the country will not disappear completely until next month, oil marketers have said.

This is coming as motorists and other petrol seekers still formed queues in front of many filling stations that had the product on Friday and Saturday in Abuja, Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kwara, Kaduna, Niger and Nasarawa states.

The fuel queues, which had reduced in Lagos and the adjoining states from Monday, became longer on Friday as many stations ran out of the supply.

Some filling stations belonging to independent oil marketers cashed in on the situation to raise the price of the product.

It was sold for between N140 and N160 at outlets along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, especially at Arepo, Ibafo and Mowe ends.

In Abuja, one of our correspondents observed that some filling stations managed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and those operated by major and independent oil marketers also had long queues of motorists waiting to be served fuel.

Some members of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria on Friday attributed the queues in many locations to the time taken to load trucks at depots.

One of the marketers that spoke on condition of anonymity said, “The loading process at depots takes time. In some depots, about 10 trucks are being loaded at a given time. While the first 10 trucks will be loading, another set of 10 trucks will have to wait, and this takes about three to four days.

“Therefore, the locations where these trucks supply products to will have limited petrol during this period of waiting; and definitely, you will find queues at those locations.”

Asked to state when the fuel scarcity situation would likely improve, the marketer said, “There is no way this situation will not drag on up unil May. I say so because it takes about two weeks for vessels to come into Nigeria and today is already April 15 and we are made to understand that some vessels are coming.

“So, the May deadline, which the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, initially gave, is actually when we will see significant improvement. However, the funny thing is that people are beginning to adjust to the situation.”

Another marketer, who is a member of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, told one of our correspondents that recently about three drivers were crushed to death while struggling to get product at a tank farm in Lagos and stressed that the fuel supply situation had yet to improve considerably.

He said, “The fuel importation and supply situation have not improved significantly, and that is the truth. You are only talking of Lagos and Abuja; do you know what is happening in Ibadan, Akure and a few other locations? Some of these places are even worse off. In Ibadan, for example, in broad daylight, some petrol stations sell at N180 per litre.

Also, speaking on the issue, the Corporate Affairs Manager, Nipco Plc, Mr. Lawal Taofeeq, stated that marketers were doing their best to end the queues, adding that petroleum products were being expected in a couple of days.

He said, “The situation has not been easy and we know it has not improved as expected in some places, but we are doing our best to make sure that the queues are cleared as fast as possible.”

However, the NNPC, in a statement issued by its spokesperson, Mr. Garba-Deen Mohammed, assured Nigerians that it was doing all within its powers to make sure that the queues disappear.

The corporation also stated that it had increased the number of petrol trucks sent to major cities, a move geared towards saturating the locations with enough product.

Meanwhile, about 228, 073 million metric tonnes of petrol will be delivered at the Lagos ports in the next five days, according to information obtained from the Daily Shipping Position on the website of the Nigerian Ports Authority.

The product will arrive in seven vessels, six of which were expected to be delivered at the Lagos ports between Friday and Saturday, with the seventh arriving on Wednesday.

Already, three vessels with a combined volume of 87,990.679 MT were awaiting berth at the Lagos ports as of Saturday, the report stated.

Details of the report indicated that two ships, Jag Pankh and Torm Gyra, were expected to respectively deliver 36,900 million metric tonnes and 30,285 million metric tonnes of the PMS at the Lagos ports on Friday.

Four ships, Oceana, Sea Clipper, Sti Saint Charles and Oversea Alcmar, would deliver 24,000 million metric tonnes, 32,000 million metric tonnes, 37,026 million metric tonnes and 30,000 million metric tonnes of petrol, respectively on Saturday.

Only Ridgebury Katherine Z with 37,862 million metric tonnes of petrol was listed to deliver the product next Wednesday.

As it was reported on Tuesday reported that new vessels carrying the PMS were being expected from the NNPC.

Over 8,000 tickets had been reportedly issued to marketers to load the PMS at depots in Apapa, even as the scarcity of the product persisted.

An official of an independent marketing firm had said a minimum of 250 trucks of petrol would be needed daily to address the product scarcity.

The National Operations Controller, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Mike Osatuyi, urged the NNPC to make the product available for loading to the oil marketers.

“If the product is available, we will load it. The NNPC should make the product available; we are ready to load 24 hours for the benefit of Nigerians. Our vehicles are ready.

“We have over 8,000 tickets that we have already paid for and waiting for loading. They are ready to partner us and so are we. We don’t have any issue with the government, but they have to make the product available by whatever means,” he said.

But the Executive Secretary, Depots and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, said some marketers still owed their international suppliers “foreign exchange for deliveries made to us between September 2014 and December last year.”

“Government has given us the naira, but we don’t have forex to pay them. Right now, what they have decided is that if we want to buy anything from them, we should bring forex. And the NNPC has assured us that they will give us. Once they give us forex, our suppliers will release cargos to us,” he said.