IPMAN narrates NNPC’s role in high cost, scarcity of fuel

Amid biting scarcity and the return of long fuel queues across the country, oil marketers under the aegis of the Independent Petroleum Marketers of Nigeria (IPMAN) has revealed that the state oil company, Nigeria National Petroleum Company Ltd NNPCL no longer supplies them petroleum products directly for the past three years.

Consequently, the marketers disclosed that they had to now source their petroleum products from private depots at a premium price of about N850.

The Chairman of IPMAN, Ore Depot, Shina Amoo, made this disclosure in an interview with Channels TV on Tuesday in Lagos.

He attributed the current fuel scarcity to the lack of supply from NNPC, which has affected everyone, including private depots.

“There is no supply anywhere. The available supply is poorly distributed. We have been raising concerns about this for a long time.

“The products we are selling, we are getting them at premium. Virtually, all the locations we are buying the product’s from, they sell to us at the prices they wish to sell from the neighborhood of N750 to N850. All depends on the depots you’re buying from.

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“We have been sorting from the private depots over the years. Instead of getting the product from NNPC at the rate of five sixty seven. None of us could get products from NNPC for the past two to three years,” he said.

Additionally, he noted that even if NNPC agrees to sell to marketers, there is a five-month wait for delivery, rendering the transaction ineffective.

“If we could get any from NNPC, when you pay your draft today, you may end up picking that product in the next three to five months, so the profit would have been eroded away. So we all prefer to have been lining up in any private depot. The private depots sell at N830 to N850, that is the situations for now,” Amoo added.

By Babajide Okeowo

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