Nigeria racing to end the week-long fuel scarcity threatening to destabilise the economy
Since last week, Nigerians have been queuing for long hours just to buy fuel. And now, state-owned energy company — the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)— has promised to end the problem in a few days.
While appearing before a house committee on petroleum in Abuja yesterday, the Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, disclosed that orders for more than 2.1 billion litres of methanol-free Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) have been placed and would arrive the country soon.
NNPC directs filling stations to operate 24-hours in order to end queues
In the meantime, the NNPC said it would commence immediate distribution of some 1 billion litres of PMS which it currently has in stock. The distribution exercise would happen round the clock until all the affected filling stations have loaded enough fuel to end the shortage. The filling stations have also be directed to operate 24 hours to ensure that every motorist gets their fuel tanks pumped full.
“In order to accelerate distribution across the country, we have commenced 24-hour operations at our depots and retail outlets… As of today, NNPC has over one billion litres of certified PMS (petrol) stock that is safe for use in vehicles and machineries,” the company said.
“As part of NNPC’s strategic restocking, over 2.3 billion litres of PMS (petrol) is scheduled for delivery between now and end of February 2022 which will restore sufficiency level above the national target of 30 days,” the NNPC said.
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Here’s the backstory
As you may well know, Nigeria imports most of its refined petroleum products. This is despite the fact that the country recorded an average daily crude output of 1.27 million barrels in 2021, thus emerging as the continent’s largest producer.
Unfortunately, some adulterated litres of PMS were inadvertently imported from Belgium and released into the market. Business Insider Africa gathered that the adulterated PMS contained high methanol which ended up damaging many car engines.
Upon discovering the problem, the NNPC embarked upon an exercise to clean up the contaminated product from the market. It was this cleanup exercise that inevitably caused the scarcity.
In the meantime, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that those responsible for importing the adulterated PMS should be held responsible. And the importers have argued that the NNPC approved the product prior to importation.
The NNPC, in its defense, stated that its inspection agents failed to detect the methanol because Nigeria’s specification do not usually include the organic compound. Hence, they weren’t testing for it.
