As acute petrol supply challenges enter its second week, independent marketers have explained that issues that led to the scarcity of the product would take another two weeks to be fully resolved.
Checks around Abuja on Sunday showed that most stations were
out of stock with very few major marketers dispensing the product in Abuja city
centre. At the suburbs, the few stations opened to motorists jacked up their
pump price from N680 per litre to N870 per litre.
Speaking to Vanguard on the situation, the Public Relations
Officer, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, Chief
Chinedu Ukadike said the product was not available in-country.
Chief Ukadike blamed the acute shortage in supply of
importation bottlenecks and the slow pace of marketers licence renewal by the
Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA.
He disclosed that only 1,050 marketers out of 15,000 have
had their licences renewed by the NMDPRA.
He said: “The situation is that there is no product. Once
there is lack of supply or inadequate supply, what you will see is scarcity and
queues will emerge at filling stations. On the part of NNPCL, which is the sole
supplier of petroleum products in Nigeria, they have attributed the challenge
to logistics and vessel problems.
“Once there is breech in the international supply chain, it
will have an impact of domestic supply because we depend on import. I also have
it good authority that most of the refineries in Europe are undergoing turn
around maintenance. So sourcing of petroleum products has become a bit
difficult.
“NNPC Group CEO has assured us that there will be
improvement in the supply chain because their vessels are arriving. Once that
is done, normalcy will return. This is because once the 30 days supply
sufficiency distrusted, it takes two to three months to restore it. We expect
that by next week or so, NNPC should be able to restore supply and with another
one week, normalcy should return”.
The challenges faced by marketers in renewing their
licences, he said: “NNPC has said the marketers who have not been able to renew
their licences will not be allowed to remain on their portal which has been
shut for sometime now. Because of this we have not been able to request for new
products.
“At this nascent
period of deregulation, you will discover that this leads to scarcity even when
the product arrives. As it is now, even by their own data, out of 15,000
marketers that are on the portal with licences, only 1,050 renewed their
licences. And the requirement for renewal by NMDPRA is so much. Marketers are
facing hostile environment. NNPC placed a deadline of April 15, 2024, for
marketers to renew their licences.
“We are therefore appealing to NNPC extend this deadline and
also to NMDPRA to hasten the release of marketers licences who have completed
their processes, and also reduce the bottlenecks around licence renewals”.
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