Amidst anxieties of an impending hike in the pump price of kerosene following scarcity of the product, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC), has allayed fears concerning the issue. It has also promised swift supply of the product.
Sources at the NNPC confirmed to Shipping Position Weekly last week that the new group managing director of the corporation, Mr Austin Oniwon, had told some members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association Nigeria, (IPMAN), who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja that he is going to look into the complains which some of association’s members made about not receiving product allocations.
He reportedly specifically assured that before the marketers get back to Lagos, normalcy would have returned to supply of kerosene.
According to the source, Oniwon had confirmed that NNPC has been “supplying NIPCO as a member of IPMAN with kerosene”.
However, this statement is yet to have an effect on the price of kerosene as the price of the product is still high, even at the depot.
Shipping Position Weekly confirmed last week that the depot price of the product remains at N80 per litre as against the former price of N64. It was also gathered that very few of the marketers had the product and that the lucky ones are: NIPCO, Sahara Energy, Techno Oil and Swift Oil.
We recall that there had been anxieties at some of the oil depots in Lagos, especially in the wake of complaints of marginalization in product allocation emanating from some of the independent marketers.
The independent marketers had based their case on the fact that the allocation of petroleum product for importation is not being done transparently. One of the marketers who expressed this anxiety recently in Lagos is Mr Ifeanyi Uba, the managing director of the Capital Oil and Gas Limited who categorically pointed out that despite the fact that his depot has a four finger jetty, preference is given to others depots with smaller capacities.
Discussion about this post