The lingering fuel scarcity in the country worsened yesterday as most depots in Lagos remained shut.
Our correspondent who visited the depots at Ibafon yesterday reports that independent depots were not dispensing fuel except Folawiyo and Capital Oil which get their supplies from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), currently the sole importer of petrol products. At Apapa, trucks lined up to load fuel from Oando and Total depots, but an official of one of the companies said the two depots have been rationing fuel discharge, adding that Oando which used to load 200 trucks per day has cut down to between 20 and 15 trucks per day.
But Nojeemdeen Korodo, NUPENG zonal president blamed the scarcity on the killing of three engineers of NNPC and the faceoff between marketers and the Federal Government over non payment of their subsidy claims.
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"The shutdown of system 2B pipeline due to vandalisation which led to the killings of three NNPC staff last week is the major cause of the current problem. The pipeline pumps fuel from Atlas cove where NNPC discharges its imported fuel to Mosimi, Ogun State to satellite depot in Lagos and other parts of the country, Ibadan, Ilorin, Kaduna, Calabar," he said.
He said since the vandals struck, there have been no supply to Ejigbo depot while at the sametime, the independent depot owners have dumped fuel importation due to non payment of their subsidy claims.
The Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Corporation, Mr. Fidel Pepple confirmed yesterday the fuel shortage is due to the shutdown of system 2b, a major pipeline that evacuates between nine to eleven million litres of fuel from lagos to Ibadan, Ilorin and the north due to serious vandalism by oil thieves a couple of weeks ago.
Mr. Pepple said that to alleviate the problems resulting from the shutdown of the pipeline, the NNPC has stepped up distribution through tankers.
"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 said fuel delivery and supply to Port Harcourt, Aba and Calabar has also been augmented saying that bridging to the North has equally enjoyed robust supply.
Mr. Pepple added that as at Thursday last week, the NNPC had 32 days sufficiency of petroleum products.
Mr. Pepple stated that the NNPC was collaborating with the security agencies to fix the Arepo pipeline in order to restore normal fuel supply to the affected areas.
He pointed out that the safety and security of oil pipelines are the collective responsibility of every citizen and appealed to Nigerians to be vigilant and contribute to making oil installations safe and secure.
Fuel scarcity which first became evident in Jos about two weeks ago appears to be worsening every passing day, with decreasing number of filling stations selling fuel, resulting in lengthening queues at open filling stations and increasing the cost in black market around the city.
"I had to buy fuel twice from the black market yesterday, first at N115 per litre from one place and somewhere else later at N120 per litre," Arch. Umar Audu, a Jos resident who uses fuel regularly for his car and power generator told Daily Trust yesterday.
Architect Audu who lectures at the University of Jos said he noticed that fuel had become so scarce in Jos that only one filling station sold fuel yesterday along the entire stretch of Bauchi Road, one of Jos city's most prominent districts.
The black market prices elsewhere in Jos are even much higher than those in Bauchi Road. A litre sells at between N160 and N165 in non-Hausa communities around Jos.
A resident of the Federal Low Cost Housing Estate in Rantya, Miango Road, Mr Joseph Ogbemi, said fuel scarcity was biting hard in Jos.
"I have to queue up at filling stations for long before I can get fuel," he told Daily Trust over the phone yesterday.
Mr Ogbemi said he resorted to the black market on Saturday when he could not afford the time on queues in filling stations and that he paid dearly for it.
"I bought a gallon (four litres) at N450," he said.
Daily Trust