Fuel scarcity across the nation has persisted as independent marketers continue to violate the priced regulation by selling at exorbitant ex-depot prices, as against the N76.50 approved by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA.
The current scarcity had started after the private oil marketing companies exhausted the little allocations approved for them by the PPPRA to import Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) for the first quarter of 2016.
PPPRA had approved the importation of 1.5 million tonnes of petrol for the private marketers and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in the first quarter fuel import allocations.
While the agency trimmed the allocations for private depot owners and marketers by over 70 per cent down to 22 per cent, it increased NNPC’s allocation to 78 per cent.
The development led to a tight supply situation as the NNPC, which claims to have the capacity to meet the country’s demands is faced with logistics challenges as most of its stock of petrol is in vessels stuck at the high seas.
It was learnt that the private marketers, who now rely on NNPC, have resorted to selling at high ex-depot to third parties, after getting allocation at the normal ex-depot price of N76.50 at the NNPC-designated private depots.
