In three to four weeks
time, Nigeria is likely to experience another round of Premium Motor Spirit
(petrol) shortage given the current supply hitches in the petroleum downstream
sub-sector.
Two marketers operating
in Apapa, Lagos State confirmed this to Punch's correspondent in separate telephone
interviews on Friday.
One of the marketers,
who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation had resorted to rationing products to marketers.
He said orders from
marketers for petrol from the national oil company had continued to pile.
Marketers, especially independent petroleum marketers, who hitherto got
seamless supply from the NNPC, had been in the waiting for weeks, Punch's correspondent gathered.
In a related
development, the Chief executive Officer of Seplat Petroleum Development
Company Plc., Mr. Austin Avuru, had on Thursday, said Nigeria would probably be
hit by fuel scarcity in three weeks as the government does not have enough
money to pay for petrol subsidies.
“In three weeks we will
be back to scarcity because we simply don’t have the money to pay for the
subsidy,” Avuru said at a Bloomberg conference held at the Nigerian Stock
Exchange.
Another marketer, whose
company has been without product for three weeks, told Punch's correspondent that,
“in three to four weeks time, the NNPC will not be able to manage this challenge
again.”
According to the source, out of the over 30 depots in Apapa, only five were functioning
as at Thursday, adding that the NNPC had continued to fail most marketers after
many promises to make petrol available to them.
This, the marketer
explained, was the reason some filling stations had remained shut for some
period.
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