Operators in the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry have blamed the recurring scarcity of Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK) in Nigeria on inability of the nation’s three oil refineries in Port Harcourt Kaduna and Warri to satisfy the demand of the commodity nationwide.
Shipping Position Daily learnt that the bulk of the kerosene consumed in the country is received from the country's three refineries. When our correspondent visited some tank farms in the Ibru axis of Apapa last week, none of them had stock of Kerosene; some of the operators said that they have not had product in the last seven months.
One of them, Comrade Alao Lateef said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as the biggest importer of kerosene only imports about 30%, he said that remaining 70% of the product is sourced internally from the three refineries in the country.
He said, “at ASCON Oil, the product has not been supplied for the past seven months, marketers have not been given the foreign exchange to import, usually, what we were told is on the appreciating crude oil price in the international market, I think the government is not being sincere”.
Another operator, Charles Ikeji a petroleum vendor said that the inability of Nigerian refineries to producing enough of the scarce commodity was not really felt by most Nigerians because of available alternative in cooking gas.
According to him, in the past, kerosene is usually taken for granted and scarcities only occur during high price regime or as a result of industrial action by different oil-sector industrial unions, he however said that the current scarcity is caused by the government inefficiencies.
Ikeji said “thank God for cooking gas, you would have seen Nigerians queuing up to buy kerosene under very chaotic situation, but as it is now, majority of the people are not really bothered because of the scarcity, they already subscribed to gas, almost every household now use gas, they only have a small stove as an alternative to when the gas finishes all of a sudden”
“At the depot, the only place you can get kerosene now is at NIPCO and Folawiyo depot, every of the depot here have not had kerosene, we believe NNPC is not even importing regularly and they wouldn’t allow marketers bring in the product”
Our correspondent gathered that pump price of kerosene is currently between N222 and N225 per litre, while the depot price for the product is between N210 and N212.
According to reports, the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC); an arm of NNPC had early in the year issued a circular announcing a further increase in price of the product.
This raised the price to N179.83 per litre for ex-depot Lagos while the ex-refinery was put at N168.94 per litre. Furthermore, marketers were forced to make additional payments of N984, 390 on May 9 and N335, 610 on June 6, this year for the same product that was paid for in November, 2017 and was never supplied by NNPC.
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