The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Saturday night disclosed that it has already secured about 31 cargoes of petrol to take care of Nigeria’s consumption for the month of March.
NNPC said that each of the 31 vessels would bring in about 30,000 metric tonnes of petrol, thus translating to a cumulative volume of 930,000 metric tonnes (MT). It added that at least one of the 30,000MT vessels would be delivered into the country every day.
The corporation said that the 30,000MT translates to 40 million litres of petrol which is what the country currently needs to meet its daily consumption.
Its Group Executive Director for Investment and Commercials, Babatunde Adeniran said these to reporters in Abuja when he inspected the operations of a few petrol service stations in the city. Adeniran was with the Managing Director of the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMA), Mrs. Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue during the inspection.
“As for products, we have products and the minister has given an instruction that he wants to see supply on a 30 days basis and we have the supply for March and that is for the whole days in March.
“Nigeria’s consumption is one vessel cargo of 30,000 metric tonnes per day and we have 31 vessels already lined up for the month of March and that excludes nine that are already discharging at the various discharge points in Lagos, Warri and Oghara,” said Adeniran.
He also disclosed that the corporation which got a 78 per cent petrol import allocation quota from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in the first quarter (Q1) was already doing 100 per cent of products importation into the country.
According to him, the corporation has being working hard to cope with such task of meeting up with the gaps.
“Regarding what has happened, our supply today is coming from NNPC 100 per cent. Under normal situation, NNPC is supposed to supply 48 per cent but the other complimentary marketers are not bringing in products that is why NNPC has to step in,” he said.
While providing an update on the current supplies and distribution challenges which had resulted in scarcity of petrol across the country, Adeniran said: “Since Thursday, we’ve made special intervention arrangements to bring in trucks, parts of which are coming in today and if you go round the streets of Abuja, you will see that most of the filling stations have started selling.”
“20 trucks have arrived Abuja as part of the first batches and we are expecting another 25 and 30 through next week. These trucks are 60,000 litres capacity trucks and as we keep receiving, we will keep circulating through Abuja and its environs.
