TheCable

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says it has lost a total of 531 million litres of petrol valued at over N50 billion to pipeline vandals between January 2015 and September 2015.

Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, managing director of the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, disclosed this to the senate committee on petroleum downstream on Thursday.

Nnamdi-Ogbue blamed the losses on vandalisation of NNPC pipelines across the country.

 “Despite the challenge posed by the unavailability of the vital System 2B Pipeline network, the PPMC has continued to ensure that the country remains wet with petrol through massive truck-out from depots in Lagos, Oghara and recently Calabar,” Ohi Alegbe, NNPC’s spokesman, quoted her as saying in a statement.

“Efforts made so far by the corporation to entrench zero fuel queues across the country are being hampered by the activities of some unscrupulous marketers involved in hoarding, sharp practices and diversion of petroleum products for sale in black markets across the country.

“We view this as a distortion to the economy and we have invited the DSS and the EFCC to take action.”

Babatunde Adeniran, group executive director, commercial and investment at PPMC, told the senate committee that the fuel situation was impaired by the inability of oil marketers to meet their import allocation.

Adeniran explained that outstanding subsidy payments was creating a gap, which PPMC has been working to bridge despite facing challenges such as hoarding and incessant pipeline hacking.