Fuel scarcity: 64.42m litres of fuel were evacuated daily between January 28 to February 3 — NNPC

By Seun Ibiyemi

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has said that 64.42 million litres of fuel were evacuated on a daily basis between January 28 and February 3.

This disclosure is contained in a Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) weekly and daily dispatch report posted on its official Twitter account on Sunday, February 5.

Meanwhile, the report also noted that within the week under review the total evacuation for the week was 450.92 million litres.

These figures give credence to the February 2 statement made by Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC, Mele Kyari on the NTA News Network that the current fuel crisis in the country was not a result of supply challenges, but of distribution challenges.

He said, “We do not have a supply problem because as we speak now, we have over 28 days of supply even if we evacuate up to 60 million liters of PMS every day.

“We have a distribution problem that comes up as a result of the shift in the cost of logistics in our business taking fuel from the mother vessels to the terminals into trucks to the fuel stations.”

According to the report, Pinnacle depot had the highest load-out at 57.28 million litres, Aiteo had 28.29 million litres, MRS Limited had 24.54 million litres. Meanwhile, Masters had 22.66 million litres, NIPCO had 22.45 million litres, Bluefin had 20.08 million litres. 26 other depots recorded between 5 to 16 million litres each. Also, 29 other load-out depots recorded less than 5 million litres each.

According to the report, 1,251 fuel trucks dispatched fuel to Lagos state during the period highlighted. 847 fuel trucks were dispatched to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and 372 fuel trucks were dispatched to Oyo state.

Meanwhile, 311 fuel trucks were dispatched to Ogun state, 268 fuel trucks were sent to Kano, 284 fuel trucks were sent to Delta state, 22 fuel trucks were sent to Ebonyi state and 159 fuel trucks were sent to Edo state.

Last week, the fuel scarcity crisis led to protests in some parts of Edo state as Nigerians were frustrated by the unavailability of fuel as well as the high costs that rose up to N500 per liter in some filling stations across the country.

In the NTA interview earlier cited, Mele Kyari promised that the challenges would soon be over. He said that in the sense of recovering costs, market players tend to escalate arbitrage to unreasonable levels.

However, the recent meeting held with stakeholders across the value chain yielded some fruits as all stakeholders are now willing to work together to ensure that normalcy is restored as regards fuel purchases.

He said there is an understanding that some of these depots where challenges occur are tackled and logistics costs are handled effectively.