Nipco Plc Boosts Fuel Supply, Takes Delivery of Imported Product
The first consignment of imported product arrived via MT CHAMPION, which has already discharged 37 million litres in NIPCO’s terminal in Lagos against all the challenges facing the sector.The integrated oil company, which disclosed that its action was also to heed the call by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, that oil marketers should bring in products to augment supplies from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC], maintained that it had already lined up several cargoes of petrol in consonance with its fourth quarter product allocation.
It is pertinent to recall that the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, had at a strategic meeting with marketer’s penultimate week sought for their support to end the fuel queues as soon as possible.
Investigation reveal that the consignments are meant to meet the growing demands of the company’s registered marketers as well meet up with the challenge of the Minister for marketers to pick up the gauntlet and activate all necessary machinery and mechanism to guarantee unimpeded distribution of petroleum products across the country.
In the same vein, it was gathered that Nipco had mapped out measures to ensure that all the products get to designated stations at regulated products in line of its avowed policy of making sure that marketers load the product at the approved depot rate of N77.66K per litre.
The company affirmed it will not tolerate any unwholesome practices by any marketer that would undermine government efforts at ensuring that petrol get to stations at regulated rates even as measures are at advanced stage with key stakeholders like PEF, DPR and other relevant agencies to track all loadings at the depots to designated stations.
The company we gathered shall not only monitor dispatch of the products to stations on the loading invoice but also ensure that it is sold only at government approved rates in line with our resolve to partner with government to tame the monster of fuel price hike in some stations,
The company had in a notice pasted at its terminal entrance cautioned all marketers registered to load petroleum products in the terminal to always be ready to abide by regulations on the supply and distribution of petroleum products across the country as it will not allow an sharp practices on any products loaded in the depot.
It’s surveillance team is already in place and “we shall not hesitate to handover any marketer loading in the depot found to be engaged in any despicable acts to law enforcement agents as such could jerk up petrol prices either at the depot level or at the station and as such resulting in more the pains to motorist we leant.”
Meanwhile checks on the company over the weekend shows that hundreds of marketers with outlets across the nooks and crannies of the country are positioning themselves to pick the products having been on the waiting list for several months owing to paucity of products
It could be recalled that Nipco came to the rescue of stakeholders under the same precarious condition in June, 2015 when she imported cargoes of petrol to ease off the lingering fuel crisis then as part of her determination to make more stations wet across the country in the face of the acute shortage during the time .
Stakeholders are of the view that this singular efforts of Nipco even in the face of non-release of the N413 billion subsidy approved by the Federal Government to meet the subsidy claims of marketers which is currently before the National assembly for appropriation.