Why there is fuel scarcity in Lagos, by NNPC

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday said that it has taken measures to end the current fuel scarcity in Lagos and some parts of the country.

Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Corporation, Mr. Fidel Pepple, said the fuel shortage was due to the shutdown of system 2b, a major pipeline that evacuates between nine to 11 million litres of fuel from Lagos to Ibadan, Ilorin and the North due to serious vandalism by oil thieves a couple of weeks ago.

Pepple stated that to alleviate the problems resulting from the shutdown of the pipeline, the NNPC had stepped up distribution through tankers.

He said: “I want to assure Nigerians that NNPC has stepped up fuel supply to marketers and distributors for effective and efficient supply of fuel to Nigerians. As I speak, we have raised the daily supply of fuel from Folawiyo Tank Farm from 150 tankers to 250 tankers, MRS from 100 to 200 tankers, Capital Oil to 300 tankers, NIPCO to 70 tankers and AITEO to 100 tankers.”

He further revealed that fuel delivery and supply to Port Harcourt, Aba and Calabar had also been augmented, saying that bridging to the North has equally enjoyed robust supply.

Pepple added that as at Thursday last week, the NNPC had 32 days sufficiency of petroleum products.

On the Arepo pipeline, which was seriously damaged by oil thieves a couple of weeks ago where three NNPC engineers were killed, Pepple stated that the NNPC was collaborating with security agencies to fix the pipeline to restore normal fuel supply to the affected areas.

He reiterated the corporation’s position that the safety and security of oil pipelines are the collective responsibility of each and every citizen and appealed to all a sundry to be vigilant and contribute to making oil installations safe and secure.

He had also stated: “We have sufficient products, but we are having distribution challenges in getting to the product to other states and final destination of selling. The just vandalised system 2B also contributes to the distribution challenges, which makes it difficult to pump products through the network to other states.”