Long queues to disappear in days: NNPC

Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation has  again assured Nigerians that the the country will be wet with petroelum products in a matter of days.

According to the country, an average of $1.8 billion is spent on quarterly basis on the importation of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as fuel, into the country.

The officials of the corporation, who spoke in a joint briefing at the presidential villa, Abuja, on Wednesday, also  apologised  to Nigerians for the lingering scarcity of the product across the country.

The  officials of NNPC were the Group General Managing, GGM, Public Affairs, Mr. Garba Deen Mohammed, and the Group Executive Directors, GED, Mr Bello Rabiu, (Upstream) Henry Obih (Downstream) and Anibor Kragha (Refineries), assured that long queues at the gas stations   would disappear in days.

Rabiu, who spoke  amid intermittent contributions from others, the GEDs said that already, several trucks loaded with fuel had been dispatched to  Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.

Abuja, he said,  is now wet with fuel and other areas will soon receive supplies.

He said,   “The objective is to brief you on the current situation of the petroleum products scarcity and queues all over the country. Let us start by tendering our apology and telling the people that we are really doing the right thing. We have been working very hard. It is supply issues that have been causing this problem but we are doing everything possible to end it. What we are doing now is to ensure that we get necessary supplies into the country through imports as well as through our refineries.

“As we speak today, we have 5 vessels serving products all over the country. And not only in Lagos, but also Port Harcout, Warri and Calabar. Apart from these vessels discharging, we also have private sector people that imported over 120 million and are discharging currently. In moving the product out into the hinterlands, we have a little option because most of the pipelines are still not working.

“Because pipelines are not working, we are relying on about 100 percent trucking to the hinterlands. The plan is that going forward, from today, we will ensure that we give what is more than required in this country. The total requirement for the whole country is about 1300 trucks. But our plan is to make at least 1500 trucks available everyday. We want to make sure that we sustain the market in a very short time. You can see that Lagos is almost cleared. Abuja is getting better. Other places will follow. Apology to Nigerians ”

On behalf of the Minister, who is also NNPC GMD, we are very sorry for what has happened. And we are working very hard to ensure that this does not happen again. We are doing everything possible to have storage that will not allow us to experience this again. Once our depots are wet, it will not take anybody more than 4 hours to take the products from NNPC to any part of the country. We are trying to ensure sustainable import, making sure that the refineries work and the pipelines also works. That will reduce all these incidences. Once we achieve that, queues will become things of the past in the country.”