TheCable

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says its mega stations across the country will begin a 24-hour sale of petroleum products to quell scarcity.

In a statement on Friday, Ohi Alegbe, group general manager public affairs division of NNPC, said the corporation had enough volume of petrol in stock to satisfy the nation’s domestic consumption requirement.

He noted that the prevailing fuel queues in some major cities across the country had nothing to do with the lack of supply of petroleum products.

Justine Ezeala, executive director (commercial) of the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), stated that a projected volume of N1.4bn litres of petrol was available for distribution to fuel stations across the country for November alone.

As part of the extra measure in place to tackle the artificially induced queues, PPMC has increased the volume of petrol being trucked out to fuel stations across major cities in the country, Ezeala added.

He also revealed that most of the 37 NNPC retail mega stations across the country had been directed to commence 24-hour service.

“NNPC Retail has 513 retail outlets all over the country and the strategy is that every one of these stations is designed to have products at all times,” he said.

“In addition we have decided that most of the mega stations will adopt 24 hours operation model and where, for security reasons, that cannot be met, we are going to have extended hours of operation in such location starting from 5am till about 10pm daily.”

Oladipo Fagbola, a managing director, said in addition to the commencement of the 24-hour service, the state-owned oil firm had opened up some hotlines to enable members of the public provide useful feedback and intelligence on the operations of mega and affiliate filling stations across the country.

The hotlines are 08057008021, 08052195801 and 08100941174.

He urged members of the public to provide useful information to assist the corporation achieve its mandate and responsibility to the fuel consumers.