The Independent Petroleum Marketers of Nigeria has disclosed that for the past three years, NNPC has stopped providing them with petroleum products directly. Instead, they now purchase their petrol at a premium price of roughly N850 from private depots.
This was disclosed by the Chairman of IPMAN, Ore Depot, Shina Amoo, made in an interview with Channels TV on Tuesday in Lagos.
The umbrella group, which has over 3,000 members and a significant portion of the country’s filling stations, accused the NNPC of not providing enough supplies to its members.
He blamed the present fuel shortage on NNPC’s lack of supplies, saying that it has impacted all parties involved, including private depots.
“There is no supply anywhere. The available supply is poorly distributed. We have been raising concerns about this for a long time.
“The products we are selling, we are getting them at premium. Virtually, all the locations we are buying the product’s from, they sell to us at the prices they wish to sell from the neighborhood of N750 to N850 all depends on the depots you’re buying from.
“We have been sorting from the private depots over the years. Instead of getting the product from NNPC at the rate of five sixty seven. None of us could get products from NNPC for the past two to three years,” he stated.
Furthermore, he stated that even in the event that NNPC consents to sell to marketers, the deal would be ineffective because of the five-month delivery wait.
“If we could get any from NNPC, when you pay your draft today, you may end up picking that product in the next three to five months so the profit would have been eroded away. So we all prefer to have been lining up in any private depot. The private depots sell at N830 to N850, that is the situations for now,” Amoo added.
Major cities like Lagos and Abuja are experiencing a fuel shortage once again, with cars lining up at the few gas stations that offer petrol on Monday and Tuesday.
