As the fuel shortage continues to bite harder, the South West Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Mr Tajudeen Adigun, has warned that the scarcity might extend to the Yuletide season unless it is quickly addressed.
He also said there was a massive shortfall in supply by the importer of last resort, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
‘’Once there is a shortfall in supply, this will disrupt the distribution channel, which is what is being experienced now,” he said.
History has shown that the demand for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly called petrol, usually rises during the Yuletide.
He said people engage in a lot of intra- and interstate travel during this period, and any slight hiccup in supply will lead to fuel scarcity.
Adigun added that the shortage of daughter’s vessels adversely affected the turnaround time for the petrol evacuation.
Adigun explained that due to the shortage of the daughter vessels, it takes about one week for such a vessel to make a trip, thus compounding the challenges around petroleum distribution and evacuation.
The IPMAN boss said most depot owners were adversely affected by this development, as the cost of chartering daughter vessels has recently risen astronomically.
“You know the depth of our water is too shallow for mother vessels to berth. So what happens is that they wait for some kilometres away for the smaller vessels to evacuate petroleum products, which comes at an additional cost,” he said.
According to the Executive Secretary of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), Mr Clement Isong, the cost of hiring a daughter vessel to transport the product from onshore to offshore is now $45,000 per day as opposed to the previous $20,000 per day because of the high cost of diesel.
He said this is in addition to other charges paid, including the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).
Adigun added that the poor state of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) depots in the West, which have not functioned due to the effect of pipeline vandals in the last two years, was also a major setback.
Adigun listed the non-functional depots to include the Lagos Satellite depot in Ejigbo, Mosimi, Ore, Ibadan, and Ilorin. He said the dysfunctional state of these depots was putting pressure on the little petroleum product available in Lagos, as marketers would have to come as far as Ilorin to load products in Lagos, which was at variance with what the intention was when these depots were established.
