The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has supplied Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, to the Port Harcourt and Warri depots as it strives to tackle lingering fuel queues witnessed nationwide.
Oil marketers confirmed that the national oil firm deployed daughter vessels that moved PMS to the depots in Rivers and Delta States to decongest the trucks that besiege the Apapa depot in Lagos daily for petrol.
According to reports, many tankers were currently at various depots in Lagos waiting to load petrol for onward delivery to states across the country as the scarcity of PMS worsens.
The report stated that though some of the trucks had started loading PMS, the supply of the product by NNPC was still not enough.
To ease the traffic in Apapa and speed up the distribution process, the national oil firm had to send some daughter vessels of petrol to its depots in Warri and Port Harcourt.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Ukadike Chinedu, noted that IPMAN controls about 80 per cent of the filling stations nationwide.
“NNPC is now receiving products based on information at our disposal. Some of these products have been sent to Port Harcourt and Warri depots. So any moment from now, or by the weekend they will release their batches and marketers will start loading in full.
“The issue of scarcity will be reduced and things will be normalised. However, they have to intensify supply, and the prices will crash when this is done. What is causing the high prices is that there is a limited supply, because demand is higher.
“So we use this opportunity to urge the NNPC to open its portal and allow marketers access to petrol for an easier loading system. They have to intensify the supply of products. But IPMAN is also using this privilege to advise Nigerians to avoid panic buying.”
As the petrol scarcity persisted in Lagos on Tuesday, task force officials in the state clamped down on black marketers in the Falomo area of Lagos.
It was also observed that the situation led to confrontations, as some task force officials were observed forcibly seizing fuel from the vendors.
