Following the deplorable state of the Oshodi-Apapa expressway and the road leading to Apapa port, downstream operators in the oil and gas sector have raised alarm that the number of petroleum trucks loaded daily at the tank farms has reduced, a situation that may lead to fuel scarcity.
Findings by our correspondent last week revealed that the failed portion of the Sunrise bus stop to Coconut bus stop along the Apapa expressway has forced activities at various tank farms in Apapa to drop. Each of the tank farm, it was gathered, dispatches not less than 40 trucks of petroleum products daily and each of the loaded trucks costs about N5 million.
But speaking with Shipping Position Daily, one of the operators at Ibeto Tank Farm, Mr. Olanife Adeoye lamented that the number of trucks going out of the depots has reduced by half. He attributed this drop to the bad state of the roads, saying that loaded trucks usually find it difficult to leave the depots.
He subsequently called on the Nigerian Ports Authority and the Ministry of Works and Housing to award the reconstruction of the Coconut and Tin Can Island road reconstruction project to Julius Berger construction company, saying that the antecedent of the contractor is impeccable.
He said, “the major problem we have now is that after loading, there is always a problem going out through the exit gate, most of the trucks from Ibru would not be able to go out because of the bad roads, sometimes they had to go all the way through Area B in order to find their way”
“The roads have also reduced the number of trucks being loaded per day because we are not always able to evacuate all the loaded trucks. It has reduced the number of loaded trucks per day by almost half. Sometimes we are not able to load all the trucks inside the depot and this is against the rule that states that all the trucks that find their way into the depot must be loaded, even if it is loaded at night”.
“The essence is that no truck remains inside the depot thereby constituting security risk, but we are now hiding some of the trucks inside the depot because some of them are not able to leave the loading gantry” he said.
Olanife further told our correspondent that in order to avoid scarcity of petroleum products due to the slow pace of loading; the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) has lifted the embargo it had earlier placed on night loading of PMS at tank farms.
He said that depots such as Ascon, Sahara Energy, and Integrated are now loading at night. “The PMS must get out to the filling stations in order to satisfy the needs of Nigerians. We had cancelled night loading, but because of the uniqueness of PMS in order not to have problem of scarcity we had to load them at night, this was why we have not been having scarcity at the filling stations”.
While stressing the need for the government to hand over the construction of the roads to only Julius Berger, Olanife said that, “the best thing is for the government to award the road contract back to Julius Berger and not any other company, in 1996 when there was pond here, it was a waterlogged soil, but Julius Berger brought dry cement and cemented the waters off, that was before the depots started springing up, the place was still a bush then, the whole of the expressway then was waterlogged”
“When Julius Berger did the work it was perfect, the problem of this road started when government started awarding the contracts to other construction companies that are not competent, we have all seen the resultant effect today”
“From Balliet to Sunrise bus stop was awarded to Julius Berger and up till now the roads are still in good shape, but from Sunrise bus stop to Coconut we have been going through hell. It is not the case of high concentration of trucks on this axis, we saw how Julius Berger handled the portion of the roads awarded to it and we saw what others did, ”he stressed
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