*Says: We Have 1.4bn litres of petrol for November
*Sets up loading hub in Oghara to ease supply challenges to northern states
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
14 November 2015, Sweetcrude, Abuja – In the face of mounting fuel queues at service stations across major cities in the country, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on Friday insisted that the country has enough petrol stocks to last for about 35 days going by her average of 40 million litres per day consumption rate.
The corporation said in Abuja that its existing record indicates that the country has an in-country stock of about 657 million litres of petrol which would last for 16 days, as well as additional 756 million litres which has been confirmed for delivery into the country’s ports for November.
It noted that the prevailing fuel queues in some major cities across the country have nothing to do with the lack of supply of petroleum products.
Speaking on the status of measures the corporation had initiated to improve on petrol supply and distribution across the country, the Director of Commercial Services of the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Justine Ezeala said that this much of petrol stock would ensure that petrol supply is buoyant across the country.
He stated that a projected volume of 1.4 billion litres of petrol are available for distribution to fuel stations across the country all through the month of November.
Ezeala informed that as part of the extra measure in place to tackle the artificially induced queues, PPMC has increased the volume of petrol being trucked out to fuel stations across major cities in the country, adding that most of the 37 NNPC Retail Mega Stations across the country have been directed to commence 24-hour service.
“NNPC Retail has 513 retail outlets all over the country and the strategy is that every one of these stations is designed to have products at all times. In addition we have decided that most of the mega stations will adopt 24 hours operation model and where for security reasons that cannot be met, we are going to have extended hours of operation in such location starting from 5am and end till about 10.pm daily,” he said.
He maintained that there was no need for the sudden emergence of queues at filling stations.
PPMC is the downstream subsidiary of NNPC. Ezeala however noted that the country still has challenges in prompt delivery of petrol to all part it because its length of pipeline which would ordinarily take fuel from its storage facilities in Lagos to depots across the country were dysfunctional.
According to him, about 4,397,288 litres of petrol was delivered to the Suleja depot on Thursday for distribution to service stations within its environ; 1,518,989 litres to Kaduna depot; 2,754,125 litres to Kano; 299,992 litres to Minna; 795,001 to Gusau; and 2,975,990 litres to Mosimi depot.
Other depots which received products from its storage facility include Satelite depot with 1,609,960 litres; Ilorin-636,992 litres; Ore-365,000 litres; Ibadan-539,955 litres; Gombe-2,101,742 litres; Benin-1,375,993 litres; Port Harcourt-1,151,811 litres; Aba-840,951 litres; and Enugu-1,399,716 litres. Warri, he noted, received no products for the day.