By Chesa Chesa
Following recent scarcity of petrol in Abuja and some other parts of the country, the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, met with President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja on Tuesday to offer explanations.
The NMDPRA boss confirmed to State House Correspondents afterwards that the shortages were due to logistics disruptions caused by severe flooding in Lagos and other parts of the country.
He said this further increased the problem of insufficiency of PMS, he assured that these issues were being addressed through coordinated efforts between Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and marketing companies.
“Obviously offshore there were a lot of soil and there were distabilisation and it was very difficult to continue our shipping operations because of safety ,the safe shuft transfer was suspended because of the volatile nature of the high sea at the time, so that two days of delays created that gap and on top of that else where there were floodings in Lagos and that distrupted truck loading and truck movement because of the floods so the floodings were now more like helpless”, he explained.
While reiterating the government’s commitment to supporting local industries and ensuring the quality of petroleum products, he disclosed that “I did brief the President that we have like 20 days sufficiency,12 days offshore and over eight days sufficiency of onshore but what is important is to translate the offshore to onshore.
“That is why I mentioned to you earlier that the movement of shipping to other parts of the country will fast-track the onshore availability and once we have the stock in onshore spread across the country then you see a lot of comforts coming in”, Ahmed added.
