Petrol Scarcity Looms as Long Queues Resurface in Lagos, Ogun
The fear of petrol scarcity is gripping many Nigerians as long queues are beginning to resurface at filling stations in Lagos and Ogun states.
Newsflash Nigeria reports that the long fuel queues were sighted at many stations on the Oshodi-Ojodu Berger Expressway in Lagos State and some sections of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on Tuesday.
According to The Punch, the looming petrol scarcity might be due to pipeline vandalism, as it was gathered that depots in Lagos were gradually running dry of petrol.
While the North-West filling station had the longest queue, as it dispensed petrol at N568/litre, others such as Eterna, NNPC, TotalEnergies, and Mobil had shorter queues, but Conoil, Enyo and Oando at Berger in Lagos, had no product to dispense.
Also, a few other filling stations, such as Worldoil, Fatgbems, and Quest in Ogun State, were under lock for lack of products.
Speaking with The Punch, the Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Satellite Depot, Akin Akinrinade, disclosed that it’s been three weeks since fuel was last loaded at the depot. Akinrinade explained that even the NNPC Retail depot is currently operating skeletal dispatching of products.
“From our end, the issue has been with the pipeline vandalism, which we raised an alarm over since July. Satellite depot has not loaded any product in the last three weeks, and whenever there is a problem here, it is going to affect Lagos and the whole of South-West.
“Although I don’t know what has been happening in other depots, from what we gathered yesterday, even NNPC Retail has been operating skeletal product dispatching. The NNPC Retail loaded just three to four trucks to Ikoyi on Monday. No product was dispatched to other places. I don’t know about other depots,” he said.
Another source, a top member of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), confirmed that demand now outweighs supply.
“NNPC has reduced importation. And the whole idea was for private individuals also to augment what NNPC brings in. But marketers are not importing. So NNPC still remains the only importer,” the source said.
This platform also understands that some depot owners have been unable to import products due to the forex crisis. Sources close to the matter revealed that many filling stations had shut down operations as they could not afford to buy products due to high prices at the depots.
“Stations are now cutting down costs because most don’t have enough money to buy products to distribute to their outlets. That is why you see that those with more than one station had to close down some of them,” one of the sources said.
Another noted, “The economy is tough right now, and marketers have been unable to import products. Emadeb had teamed up with other marketers and brought in about 27 million litres. But since then, who else did you hear has brought in the product? We are now back to the era of NNPC being the sole importer and would still continue to dictate what the market price would be.”
Meanwhile, Newsflash Nigeria learned that an alarm was raised by managers of the Ejigbo Satellite Depot in July over incessant activities of pipeline vandals on the System 2B pipeline in front of Good Luck Estate at Idimu, Alimosho Local Council Development Area of Lagos.
Also recently, the NNPC Retail, who had hitherto abandoned its 21 depots across the country due to pipeline vandalism, made efforts to revamp the damaged pipelines by reviving the Satellite depots in Lagos, which was expected to ease distribution challenges across South-West states.
However, with this latest development of pipeline vandalism and reduced importation by NNPC and marketers alike, Nigerians may have to brace up for another round of petrol scarcity and price hike in the coming days.
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