NNPC moves to tackle fuel supply crisis

In a two-pronged approach aimed at improving petroleum products' supply into the domestic market, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) last week ...

 constituted a 12-man Committee to work round the clock and ensure that the lingering queues in fuel stations nationwide are brought under control within seven days.
While inaugurating the Committee last Wednesday in Abuja, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Muhammed Barkindo charged members of the Committee to take up the assignment given to them with utmost sense of patriotism so that the pains associated with the over two-month old downstream problem could be removed and allow the economy to pick at full steam.
In addition, the Corporation also announced the completion of the maintenance works of the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company (WRPC), giving a new hope that more refined products would be available for pumping to the various depots across the country within the next two weeks.
With the streaming of the WRPC which has about 16,994.015 metric tonnes refining capacity per day and the inauguration of the Committee, industry experts believe that products' availability in the domestic environment would be substantially enhanced such that the current product racketeering in the downstream sector might be over within the next few days.
The WRPC broke down a few months ago and had remained unproductive since then as government took strategic initiatives to fix it. Although government, through the NNPC has embarked on product importation to meet the domestic demand in the last two months, problems of pipeline vandalization and other logistics challenges constrained adequate supply to the market.
It is believed that over 10 million metric tons of refined products are needed to meet local demand out of which 20 per cent were supposed to be refined by the four refineries. For instance, available figures of 2008 products' supply and demand indicated that of the total 47,738,718.84 barrels (6,510,094.20 metric tons) products for processing locally, only 39,264,519.48 barrels (5,353,268.00 metric tons were processed into various petroleum products, mainly Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), Automated Motor Oil (Diesel), Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK) and Household Kerosene (HHK) and others.
During the year, Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) evacuated only 5,131,830 metric tons of the products and also imported 5,505,687.11 metric tons for distribution in the domestic market. Of this, PMS demand stood at 9,500.38 million litres, reflecting an average daily consumption figure 25.96 million litres while AGO accounted for 1,517.52 million litres or 11.07 per cent of the total volume pumped into the market.