TheCable

The management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced its plan to import one billion litres of petroleum in March to address the scarcity of the product.

Although, the corporation insists that there is no scarcity of the product, queues at filling stations across the country prove otherwise.

This led to a powerful monitoring of fuel stations in a bid to checkmate hoarding and panic buying, which the corporation claims are responsible for the scarcity.

Led by the group managing director, Joseph Dawha, and other executives of the corporation, NNPC believes that the scarcity will be resolved before the end of the week.

Farouk Ahmed, executive secretary of Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), told NAN that the problem is artificial because there was enough fuel in supply.

This gave credence to speculations that the scarcity is fueled by major oil marketers in protest to delay in subsidy payments and the falling rate of the Naira to the US dollar, which makes it difficult to raise capital for the product owing to increased interest rates .

“The problem we have is not really with the supply because there is enough supply ,” Ahmed said.

“The PPMC has almost more than 800,000 metric tones that will be arriving in the month of March, which is over a billion litres in terms of our daily consumption.

“Other marketers are also bringing in their cargo so by the end of the week, hopefully, everything will be clear. I think we should just encourage the people to desist from panic buying; things are going to be very okay.”

The Managing Director of PPMC said the corporation had more than enough of the products in the stock for the entire nation.

Haruna Momoh, managing director of Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC), explained that there was a good buildup till April and with this buildup, there would be no problem in terms of supply.

“There are challenges with distributions; we will continue to handle those challenges and we try everything possible to make it seamless, smooth and as stable as possible beyond April,” he said.