Business activities at petroleum tank farms sprawled along the ever-busy Apapa-Oshodi expressway were last week restricted as the expressway as well as major accesses to the petroleum tank farms were overtaken by flood, human and other wastes.
Shipping Position Daily correspondent who was at the depot last week reported that the flood started around Capital Oil depot and extended up to Integrated Oil tank farm. Some of the operators also took to social media throughout last week, posting series of ‘Save Our Soul’ (SOS) messages to call the attention of Federal Government to the bad condition of the expressway.
In one of the posts, one of the operators wrote “Help, Apapa-Oshodi expressway opposite Sahara Depot taken over by flood” other posts read “please, Federal Government and State Government, flood has taken over Apapa-Oshodi expressway between Sunrise bus stop and Coconut bus stop”.
One of the operators who pleaded anonymity told our correspondent that the cause of the flood on the expressway was because the drainages have overflowed to the expressway bringing out wastes and some indecomposable materials like pure water nylon, bottle water cans among others.
He said, “even a canoe cannot paddle the place, the only people who are able to buy the conventional rain boots are the ones that were able to walk around it. Because of this, movement from Capital Oil to Coconut is restricted because there is no way to move around”
“The petroleum trucks were still coming, despite the bad road challenges, they manage to stay three days in the traffic, by the time they get to Integrated Depot, and they quickly load, they take another two to three days to get out of the area”.
Confirming this also, a member of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD); an arm of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) Mr. Fidel Ose in a chat with Shipping Position Daily lamented that the flood and its attendant wastes is disturbing operations heavily at the tank farms.
According to him, depots that were loading 100 trucks before are now reduced to loading just 25 trucks. He however assured that the PTD and the NUPENG are making efforts to commence the digging of the drainage in order to de-flood the expressway.
According to him, “the union is trying to do something about it by this weekend, we want to see if we can re-dig the drainage so that the water can leave the road and possibly use some hardcore to fill some very bad locations”
Discussion about this post