NNPC Discharges 209 Million Litres Of Petrol.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has discharged about 209 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol in Lagos Ports in the last 24 hours in the hope of ending an embarrassing fuel shortage that has paralysed commercial activities in some major towns

A statement by the NNPC on Wednesday in Abuja and signed by the acting General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Dr. Omar Ibrahim, said all hands were on deck to return normalcy to the fuel supply chain in the country and that several vessels had been allocated to the Major Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) for distribution across the country.

Nigeria’s four refineries, have a combined 445,000 barrel-a-day capacity, but a combination of dubious management and poor choices ensures they cannot meet produce enough refined fuel for consumption within the country .

Nigeria, Africa’s top crude exporter and the most populous with more than 160 million people, relies on fuel imports to meet more than 70 percent of its needs, exchanging 60,000 barrels a day of crude each for products with Trafigura Beheer BV and Societe Ivoirienne de Raffinage’s refinery in Ivory Coast, in questionable deals.

The NNPC, which oversees the dubious deals said on Wednesday that NIPCO, CONOIL and others also had their vessels discharging to clear up the queues, saying in the statement: “I can confirm to you that the NNPC has allocated additional vessels laden with PMS to MOMAN and other suppliers.

“They are currently discharging the products at Atlas Cove, Apapa, IBM Jetty, Capital Jetty and SPM Jetty in Lagos,” it stated.

The corporation also stated that other vessels were also discharging fuel at Port Harcourt and Oghara in Delta, adding that the queues would thin out in the next few days.

NNPC reassured Nigerians that it was doing everything humanly possible to wipe out the queues from filling stations across the country.

The scarcity has pushed the pump price of the product in some parts of the country to as much as N250 per litre with a lot motorists having to queue for hours at filling stations before getting any to buy at all.

From my own point of veiw it is really a shame and a great challenge that we claim to be the gaints of Africa and we cannot simply manage our crude oil. This basic problem still lies in our education system and our means of trasmuting knowledge from imagination to visiblility.