….says over 1.5B Litres of PMS is available
From Lateef Taiwo
The House of Representatives Committees on Petroleum Resources, Downstream and Midstream have assured Nigerians that the ongoing queue arising from scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, or petrol will disappear in few days.
The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Downstream and Midstream, led by Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere and Hon. Odianosen Henry Okojie respectively gave the assurance on Tuesday in press conference held at the National Assembly Complex yesterday in Abuja.
Hon Ugochinyere further described as very unfortunate the attitude of some Nigerians who are currently engaging in panic purchase of fuel, leading to artificial scarcity in some part of the country.
The lawmaker equally raised concerns over the temporary presence of fuel queues in petrol stations across the country which has adversely affected the lives and businesses of Nigerians.
He used the opportunity to passionately appeal to Nigerians to calm down and avoid rush purchase of petrol oroducts adding that they have taken all necessary steps to address various logistic challenges initially noticed.
It was gathered that the essence of the press briefing was to assure Nigerians that the ongoing scarcity in the FCT, Lagos among other states of the federation has been tackled headlong for the benefit of all citizenry.
Earlier in his address, Hon Ugochiyere disclosed that his
Private investigation has revealed that there is availability of petrol products across different parts of the country adding that over 1.500 billion liters has since arrived FCT and other states.
The lawmaker also informed that the supply and distribution of the products to marketers was temporarily disrupted by challenges of transport vessels that supposed to take the products from offshore to onshore for effective delivery across the country but not for some logistics challenges which he said had since been addressed.
According to Hon Ugochinyere, petroleum product distribution have commenced and the queues will disappear in matter of few days.
He, however urged all Nigerians and most especially the motoring public to aviod any panic buying as there are enough product availability in the country.
Hon Ugochinyere who is currently representing Ideato North South Federal Constituency of Imo State in the House of Representatives equally reinstated his committee readiness to reach out to all key stakeholders in the sector in few days to ensure that fuel is available to all and sundry.
He explained that currently, the two committees which includes, the downstream and midstream committees are working assiduously to reached out to major stakeholders in the distribution value chain, like the NNPCL, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, PETROAN, as well as the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, with a view to ascertaining the cause of the resurgence of the fuel queues across the country and resolve them.
However, the lawmaker was very optimism that normalcy will soon return in a few days, promising arrival of enough availability of PMS across the states of federation.
He further identified various challenges that might have caused the scarcity of fuel, such as, logistics, difficulty in transporting products from the mother vessel among others.
Meanwhile, he has also assured that the lawmakers have gotten the assurances from the regulators in the value chain that these bottlenecks have been cleared.
He also assured that the Committees which oversights activities in the Downstream and Midstream petroleum sectors, have resolved that going forward and in order to avert the reoccurrence of this temporary challenge of distribution disruption, they shall work with the NNPCL, NMDPRA, PETROAN, NARTO and other key stakeholders in the distribution chain, towards finding a sustainable solution in ensuring that they do not run into such avoidable disruption in the near future, which can hamper economic activities.
In his brief comments at the press briefing, Hon Odianosen Okojie who is the the Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Midstream explained that as a committee he among other members have engaged sufficiently with the appropriate authorities in terms of fuel distribution to resolve the ongoing scarcity.
The lawmaker further informed that from his observations, the fuel queues across some major cities have started reducing and products have started arriving the petrol stations.
Meanwhile, the lawmaker has urged Nigerians not to engage in panic buying as well as engage in a rush to buy products.
“As a country we have a storage of over 1.5 billion litres which can last for over 30 days”. He emphasized.
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