The Independent Petroleum Marketers of Nigeria (IPMAN) has revealed that NNPC no longer supply them petroleum products directly for the past three years as they now source their petroleum from private depots at a premium price of about N850.
The Chairman of IPMAN, Ore Depot, Shina Amoo, made this disclosure in an interview with Channels TV on Tuesday in Lagos.
The umbrella organization, with over 3,000 members and a substantial share of Nigeria’s filling stations, also accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited of not supplying sufficient products to its members.
He attributed the current fuel scarcity to the lack of supply from NNPC, which has affected everyone, including private depots.
“There is no supply anywhere. The available supply is poorly distributed. We have been raising concerns about this for a long time.
“The products we are selling, we are getting them at premium. Virtually, all the locations we are buying the product’s from, they sell to us at the prices they wish to sell from the neighborhood of N750 to N850 all depends on the depots you’re buying from.
“We have been sorting from the private depots over the years. Instead of getting the product from NNPC at the rate of five sixty seven. None of us could get products from NNPC for the past two to three years,” he said.
Additionally, he noted that even if NNPC agrees to sell to marketers, there is a five-month wait for delivery, rendering the transaction ineffective.
“If we could get any from NNPC, when you pay your draft today, you may end up picking that product in the next three to five months so the profit would have been eroded away. So we all prefer to have been lining up in any private depot. The private depots sell at N830 to N850, that is the situations for now,” Amoo added.
What you should know
Fuel scarcity has reemerged in major cities such as Lagos and Abuja, with vehicles lining up at the few filling stations selling petrol on Monday and Tuesday.
Nairametrics observed that major roads in both cities were notably empty, as motorists were unable to travel due to a lack of fuel.
Even NNPC-owned filling stations were completely closed, with some drivers waiting in vain for them to reopen.
Yesterday, fuel prices varied between N840 and N1,200 at different locations across the country.
Many filling stations attributed the scarcity to a lack of fuel distribution by marketers to their stations, though they could not explain the underlying cause of this distribution issue.