21 NNPC depots dysfunctional, pipelines obsolete, vandalised –IPMAN
The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) says that the Twenty-one depots belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and meant for the storage of petroleum products, particularly Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, are dysfunctional and moribund
its National President, Alhaji Debo Ahmed disclosed that all the 21 depots of NNPC located in the six geographical areas of the nation are moribund.
The President said that the negative impact on IPMAN members business is enormous, because it made timely procurement of petroleum products longer and expensive thus making real time supply unattainable.
According to him, “Before the depots became moribund, they serve their catchment areas because of their proximity and minimise the cost of doing business.
” The proximity to source of supplies are eroded especially to our members outside Lagos coastal areas where we now have concentrated private deports.
“Our members in faraway areas of the counting have to travel to these coastal areas for the procurement of petroleum products with a lot of challenges that add to the cast of doing business.
“Challenges of bad roads, high cost of diesel, prohibited prices of spare parts and tyres, hold-up of vehicles associated with Lagos roads and a lot of impediments.
“Our members are let finding it easy on this bridging of petroleum products,” he added.
Ahmed said that the trend now is not measures taken by IPMAN against members engaging in overpricing of petrol, adding that the issue now is that is the petrol available to go round?
“NNPC is the only importer of petrol and NMDPRA fix the pricing template to cover all cost relate factors along the value chain of distribution.
“Because of the moribund nature of their depots. NNPC discharged petroleum products in private depots all over the country for IPMAN to off-take from these private depots with a price of N148.17 but most of these depots are selling to IPMAN members at the rate between N220-230 per litre.
” So IPMAN members who wants to keep their business running have to buy and sell with additional margin on,” he said.
The President said that Pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft and arbitrary payments of subsidy are three vices bedeviling the Nigerian oil and gas industry that do not allow Federal Government to realize the full financial benefits accruing to the government for developmental projects.
He said that since the Petroleum Industry Act ( PIA Act 2021) has been signed and by the President Mohammedu Buhari and the unbundling of NNPC is in progress, the depots and the pipelines should be given to private companies to manage the pipelines and the moribund depots for effective utilisation across the nation.
“Nearness to sources of supplies will have positive impact on pricing when full deregulation commences. The security of crude oil pipelines should be utmost concern to the government and stringent conditions should be attached to allocation of oil blocks and the sales of crude oil.
“Benchmarking the production output to all oil reducing companies, partnering with Lloyds of UK in monitoring Vessels loading points and sales point worldwide.
“Deployment of IT, infrastructure through satellite monitoring on vessels applying the crude oil loading terminals.
“Private security network to monitor the crude oil pipeline.
Heavy punishment for crude oil thieves.
“Arbitrary payment of fuel subsidy should stop and be payments should be based on actual daily Consumption Figures.
“With the economic trend declining globally, the government cannot sustain the continues payments of subsidy so therefore deregulation of the downstream is the most ideal,” he added.
On foreign exchange, Ahmed said that forex acquisition is difficult to come by those days, adding that the official rate and the parallel market rate is a wider pole apart.
“Officially importers cannot assess the government rate in the Central Bank, so most importers assess Forex from the parallel market thus making the cost of importation higher and increasing the pricing of imported deregulated petroleum products e.g. AGO, DPK, Cooking Gas or base oil for lubricants.
“Other equipment like dispensing pumps prices has also skyrocketed because of non-availably of Forex Investment among members are declining because of lack Forex.
- On quackery, Ahmed said: “In an association of this magnitude one cannot do without having quackery at a minimum level because our constitution define our membership states profiling and guiding our operations.
” It is the responsibility of the government to check quackery through the agencies in the physical structures of operations that have direct contact with the general public.
“That is why a lot of government agencies are involved in the establishment and operations of petrol Station e.g. Police, Fire Services, NMDPRA, W&M and host of other State agencies.
He said that quackery is check through membership guideline entrenched in IPMAN 1997 constitution
