By Adewale Sanyaolu
The fuel supply situation in Lagos disrupted by shortage in supply has witnessed significant improvement with fuel queues gradually reducing.
Finding by Daily Sun across some retail outlets at weekend indicated that motorists are beginning to heave a sigh of relief as the turnaround time has improved tremendously.
Speaking with Daily Sun in a telephone interview, the National Operations Controller, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria(IPMAN), said the intervention by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited(NNPCL) has started yielding results.
He explained that the directive by NNPCL to some selected depot to sell products to IPMAN members at the official ex-depot price was responsible to the reduction in queues.
He equally added that the import level of petrol by NNPCL was also being improved upon as against the what was obtainable in the past.
‘‘We thank NNPCL for breaking the monopoly being enjoyed by some stakeholders in the petroleum products distribution chain. The threat by NNPCL to sanction any depot that sells above the approved ex-depot price worked magic.
For now, I can tell you authoritatively that IPMAN members have started loading products at NIPCO and Emadeb stations’’.
NNPCL had recently disclosed that it pumped 450 million litres to marketing companies to tackle the acute shortages of petrol
The company in its nationwide weekly petrol evacuation and dispatch report for Week 6, 2023, which it posted on its Twitter handle disclosed that its average daily evacuation for the week stood at 71 million litres.
This was even as the company disclosed that it had perfected plans to resume the pumping of petrol to depots through the Atlas-Cove pipeline, otherwise known as the System 2-B pipeline.
With the recent supply of 502 million litres to marketers between February 4 to 10, for onward dispatch to filling stations, NNPC has within two weeks injected 953.13 million litres to the market.
According to the report, the national oil company increased the average daily volume of product evacuated from all major and minor depots and terminals in the country to 71.74 million litres in seven days.
Analysis of the figures showed that the average volume of petrol evacuated daily at the terminals increased by 7.32 million litres to 71.74 million litres in Week-6 from the 64.42 million litres evacuated in Week-5, 2023.
The report indicated that 87 per cent of the evacuation took place at the top 31 loading depots, with a minimum evacuation of 5 million litres from StockGap terminal in Apapa, Lagos and a maximum evacuation of 71.53 million litres at Pinnacle Oil, Lekki.
The NNPC’s report stated that 28 other loading depots evacuated 13 per cent of the total volume as DANMARNA Petroleum Company recorded the maximum evacuation of 4.86 million litres, while Swift Oil and Gas had the lowest evacuation of 40,000 litres.