NNPC Releases Additional 464.4 Million Litres Of PMS To Reduce Fuel Queues

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has released additional 464.46 million litres of Petroleum Motor Spirit into the Nigerian market within a one week period covering May 23 and May 29.

The move is part of measures aimed at addressing the recent queues experienced in some filling stations across the country.

Fuel queues returned to the Federal Capital Territory last Thursday as motorists spent hours at filling stations waiting to buy PMS.

There were long queues in some of the filling stations on Friday, while others were completely shut down due to scarcity of the product.

The NNPC had in recent times introduced several innovations to bring back normalcy in the supply of PMS.

Of the 464.46 million litres, 50.79 million litres were evacuated by Pinnacle-Lekki, the highest beneficiary, while AITO received 29.22 million litres.

Also, Matrix received 19.9 million, while AYM Shafa and Rainoil received 19.23 million litres and 17.39 million litres respectively.

A total of 75 depots received the PMS product, according to the data released by NNPC LTD.

The data released by the NNPC showed that 79 per cent of the evacuation took place at the top 30 high loading depots.

The other 45 loading depots evacuated the balance of 21 per cent of the product, the state owned company said.

The Report also revealed that the NNPC recorded a new average daily evacuation of 66.35 million litres.

THE WHISTLER had reported how the NNPC deployed over 150 trucks of Premium Motor Spirit from the depots to tackle the issue of fuel queues in some parts of the country.

Sources within the NNPC had told THE WHISTLER that the fuel queue was caused by the challenges experienced by truck drivers in the distribution of petroleum products.

It was gathered that some bad portion of the roads in the country and general inadequacy of bridging fees payable to marketers were also responsible for the hitches.

The Federal Government had last month released N58bn as part of response to claims by the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria that bridging claims of N500bn could lead to a fuel crisis