The House of Representatives has assured Nigerians that it would handle the oil trading firms that imported the adulterated Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol, into the country.
This is as the fuel scarcity in some major cities across the country, including Lagos and Abuja bit harder.
This was made known on Wednesday by the Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Hon, Abdullahi Mahmud Gaya, while responding to a question from one of the committee members, during engagement with the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, organized by the committee on the recent fuel situation in the country.
What the NNPC Group Managing Director is saying
During the meeting, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, explained that the situation came about as a result of the discovery of methanol in the petrol cargoes shipped to Nigeria under the subsisting commercial contract operated by NNPC and its partners.
Kyari said the reason the tests did not reveal methanol presence was because Nigeria’s specifications do not include methanol and as such there was no way they could have known about methanol presence.
He pointed out that the only way they could have known about it is if their suppliers, in good faith disclosed it, noting that the discovery was made by NNPC inspection agents who noticed the emulsification of filling stations and brought it to their attention.
NMDPRA deploys surveillance teams to filling stations in Lagos
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) on Thursday, revealed that it has deployed 7 ad-hoc surveillance teams to monitor petrol stations across Lagos State.
The downstream petroleum regulatory agency also confirmed that 37 million litres of petrol was trucked out with 885 trucks to the stations on Wednesday.
According to NAN, the disclosure was made by the Zonal Operations Controller of NMDPRA, Lagos, Mr Ayorinde Cardoso, when he led a surveillance team to some petroleum products retail outlets across the state.
Cardoso assured that normalcy would soon be restored on fuel distribution and supply across the state with the level of efforts being made by all stakeholder in the downstream sector of the oil industry.
He said, “We have sufficient fuel in Lagos now and we have quarantined the contaminated products in some of the impacted depots. Our focus right now is to push out clean product to all the stations. Right now in Lagos, as at Wednesday morning, we had over 128 million litres in our depots.
“We have five vessels that are currently discharging since February 15, and they will also bring in about 204 million litres. So in total, in Lagos, we are looking at about 332 million litres within our system. As at Wednesday, we have trucked out about 37 million litres with 885 trucks.
“This morning we went out with seven ad-hoc surveillance teams to assess the impact of those 885 trucks that were sent out.”
He said the monitoring team was checking availability of products in the outlets as well as the product quality to prevent infusion of any contaminated PMS which had been quarantined by the authorities.
Cardoso said the officials were also checking for hoarding of products by marketers, stressing that any marketer caught engaging in such activity would be penalised.
He also advised residents against panic buying as there is enough petrol supply and as such no need for that.
In case you missed it
- Recall that as part of measures to address the fuel scarcity situation across the country, the NNPC had directed all its depots and outlets to begin 24 hours operations across the country.
- NNPC Group Executive Director (Downstream), Mr Adetunji Adeyemi, in a press briefing on Tuesday in Abuja, stated that the company was already accelerating petrol distribution.
- Stressing that several million litres of petrol were in stock, he revealed that the NNPC was expecting about 2.3 billion litres of petrol in the country by the end of the month.
- Adeyemi said the company has constituted a monitoring team with the support of the regulatory authority and other security agencies to ensure the smooth distribution of petrol nationwide.
