Long lines are starting to reappear at gas stations in Lagos and Ogun states, which suggests that there may soon be a shortage of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as fuel.
According to Anaedoonline.ng, while lengthy lines were seen at numerous stations along the Oshodi-Ojodu Berger Motorway in Lagos State and in some areas of the Lagos-Ibadan Motorway, none have yet been seen in Abuja or other northern states.
As reported by The Punch that the lengthy fuel lines had progressively extended onto the motorway, impeding traffic on the service lane.
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The platform asserts that pipeline vandalism may be to blame for the impending fuel shortage. It was heard that Lagos terminals were gradually running out of petrol.
While the North-West filling station had the largest line because it sold gasoline for N568 per litre, others, including Eterna, NNPCL, TotalEnergies, and Mobil, had shorter lines because they charged N570 per litre for gasoline. However, Conoil, Enyo, and Oando at Berger in Lagos had no product to sell.
A few additional petrol stations, including Worldoil, Fatgbems, and Quest in Ogun State, were also closed due to a product shortage.
The last time fuel was loaded at the depot was three weeks ago, according to Akin Akinrinade, Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Satellite Depot.
Even the NNPCL Retail facility, according to Akinrinade, is only now conducting skeletal product dispatching.
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“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 submitted.
Another source, a top member of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria ( MOMAN), confirmed that demand now outweighs supply.
“NNPCL has reduced importation. And the whole idea was for private individuals also to augment what NNPCL brings in. But marketers are not importing. So NNPCL still remains the only importer,” the source said.
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Additionally, this platform is aware that certain depot owners have been unable to import goods as a result of the force situation.
Numerous filling stations have stopped operating, according to sources familiar with the situation, since they were unable to afford the exorbitant cost of the supplies 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 NNPCL being the sole importer and would still continue to dictate what the market price would be.”
While this was going on, Anaedoonline.ng discovered that managers of the Ejigbo Satellite Depot had alerted authorities in July to the persistent vandalism of the System 2B pipeline in front of the Good Luck Estate in Idimu, Alimosho Local Council Development Area of Lagos.
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Recently, NNPCL Retail, which had previously abandoned its 21 depots around the nation owing to pipeline vandalism, made an effort to repair the pipelines that had been damaged by reopening the Satellite depots in Lagos, which had resumed operations last year but had again been vandalised in July.
When approached to comment on the situation, the NNPCL spokeswoman, Garba-Deen Muhammad, said he was communicating with a representative of an oil company who had some insight into the situation and would get back to him.
However, Muhammad was not reachable and had not referred back as promised at the time of filling this report.
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