Fuel scarcity: Supply challenge will last for another 2 weeks, says IPMAN 

Independent marketers have stated that it will take an additional two weeks to fully remedy the issues that caused the product to become scarce as the severe petrol supply problems move into their second week.

Sunday’s checks throughout Abuja revealed that very few big marketers were distributing the product in the heart of the city, and the majority of stations were out of stock. The few gas stations in the suburbs that were open to cars raised their pump prices from N680 to N870 per litre.

The product was not available in Nigeria, according to Chief Chinedu Ukadike, Public Relations Officer of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), who discussed the subject with Vanguard.

Chief Ukadike placed the blame on the severe lack of importation bottleneck supplies and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority’s (NMDPRA) sluggish licence renewal process for marketers.

Out of 15,000 marketers, he said that just 1,050 got their licences renewed by the NMDPRA.

He said: “The situation is that there is no product. Once there is lack of supply or inadequate supply, what you will see is scarcity and queues will emerge at filling stations. On the part of NNPCL, which is the sole supplier of petroleum products in Nigeria, they have attributed the challenge to logistics and vessel problems.

“Once there is breech in the international supply chain, it will have an impact of domestic supply because we depend on import. I also have it good authority that most of the refineries in Europe are undergoing turn around maintenance. So sourcing of petroleum products has become a bit difficult.

“NNPC Group CEO has assured us that there will be improvement in the supply chain because their vessels are arriving. Once that is done, normalcy will return. This is because once the 30 days supply sufficiency distrusted, it takes two to three months to restore it. We expect that by next week or so, NNPC should be able to restore supply and with another one week, normalcy should return”.

The challenges faced by marketers in renewing their licences, he said: “NNPC has said the marketers who have not been able to renew their licences will not be allowed to remain on their portal which has been shut for sometime now. Because of this we have not been able to request for new products.

“At this nascent period of deregulation, you will discover that this leads to scarcity even when the product arrives. As it is now, even by their own data, out of 15,000 marketers that are on the portal with licences, only 1,050 renewed their licences. And the requirement for renewal by NMDPRA is so much. Marketers are facing hostile environment. NNPC placed a deadline of April 15, 2024, for marketers to renew their licences.

“We are therefore appealing to NNPC extend this deadline and also to NMDPRA to hasten the release of marketers licences who have completed their processes, and also reduce the bottlenecks around licence renewals”.