Oil marketers have said the Federal Government should evacuate and dispense the products currently trapped in the depots which were shut down recently by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.
Marketers said the products should be dispensed at the regulated rate of N148/litre to help address the scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, in some states, instead of leaving them trapped despite the fuel crisis across the country.
But the NMDPRA argued that it did its calculation to ensure that the effect of the shut depots did not significantly impact the affected zones, as it revealed would now check the tanks of filling stations and other depots in order to halt the hoarding of petrol.
On Saturday, the Federal Government announced that it had shut down the operations of seven depots in various locations in Nigeria for dispensing petrol at outrageous prices to retail outlets.
The Chief Executive, NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja, said the action by the affected depots contravened the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, and also contributed to the recent PMS supply crisis in the downstream oil sector.
Reacting to this, the Secretary, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Abuja-Suleja, Mohammed Shuaibu, told our correspondent that the government should go beyond shutting down depots.
He said, “It is not just by shutting down the depots. If you shut down the depots when there are products in them, and you didn’t evacuate the products at the regulated price to the public, then you may end up causing more PMS supply problems.
“If you are a regulator, go in there and enforce, let them open the gates, bring in tankers to evacuate the products to the public so that there will be surplus fuel that will help in driving down the price.
“But by the time you shut down the depots and the products remain in their tanks, we won’t get the products, and who suffers when two elephants fight? The masses will suffer and we are suffering now. These are the consequences.”
