Five petrol-laden vessels from Belgium turned back

  

NNPC: why we rejected consignment

Scarcity spreads to more states

Five Nigeria-bound petrol-laden vessels from Belgium were turned back, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited said yesterday.

The country is still reeling under scarcity of petrol, an after effect of the discovery of imported toxic petrol, which is being mopped up.

Group Managing Director of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, told House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) yesterday the oil giant had filed for liquidated damages against the suppliers of the off-spec product.

He assured Nigerians that the NNPC was doing everything to ensure product availability.

He restated that about 2.5 billion litres of PMS were being expected before the end of the month.

Kyari said: “For this current situation, I assure you that we have taken every necessary step to restore supply into this country.

“We have placed orders significant enough for us to cross into March, with at least 2.1 billion litres of PMS in our custody.

“The situation you’re seeing today, I can assure you that by next week, it will vanish, all things being equal.”

On why inspectors did not detect methanol, Kyari said: “It is not part of their requirements at the load port. So, we didn’t ask them to declare whether it contains methanol because it is not part of our specification.

“Let me make it clear that methanol is not contamination. It is a regular additive to PMS. In China, up to 15 per cent of PMS contains methanol.

“On its own, it is not a contamination. The key issue is handling methanol. If we knew, we will not accept this. Anytime methanol comes in contact with water, it emulsifies, it turns into a different chemical.

“We didn’t know until our inspecting agents, on 20th of January to be precise, called our attention to the fact that they had seen emulsification in some of the depots and this may be a cause of concern.

“That was how we went ahead to check all the deliveries in our hands from all the four vessels that had already been discharged to confirm that all of them contain methanol.

“We quarantined all the volumes wherever they were in depots transit and we were able to track them. We were able to trace all of them and quarantine them.

“Not only that. We are also expecting several other supplies to come from other sources.

“We checked their origin and confirmed that five other vessels are coming from the same shipping terminal that loaded this and we rejected all of them; they did not sail into our waters.”

He added: “We did not test for methanol both at the load port and by the NNPC and the regulatory authority. I was very clear on this.

“What they (importers) are saying is that ‘what I brought met your specification.’ But what they probably also did not know is that it contained methanol and that methanol originated from the loading terminal.

“It is a legal issue, but it is nowhere sustainable because we have also filed liquidated damages which they can pass on until it gets to the originating depot.

“The liquidated damages can be a legal process where you may not even be able to recover your possession.”

‘No need for panic buying, we’re sorry’

Kyari reassured Nigerians every necessary step has been taken to ensure supply sufficiency.

“Let me tell Nigerians that we have a robust supply plan. By the end of this month, we’ll have about 2.1 billion litres of PMS.

“What we call panic buying is a situation where people who usually go the filling stations to buy N2,000 worth now buy five times that volume and those with more than one car will bring out all their cars.

“That is why you see all these cars in the filling stations and it creates supply disruption.

“We are assuring Nigerians that we have a robust supply plan and there is no need to bring out all your cars. Just buy what you need because there are plans to address this situation.”

He expressed regret over the economic disruptions and hardship.

“We are very conscious of the consequences that will come with it – the queues that you are seeing, the disruption of the economic activities that are very obvious. We are aware of this.

“We regret this situation and it is completely unavoidable. We didn’t see it coming. I apologise to Nigerians that we didn’t see it coming.”

A member of the Committee, Adedeji Olajide, said NNPC’s ignorance about the PMS containing methanol was not an excuse, adding somebody must be held responsible.

He said: “Somebody must take responsibility for this because if we don’t, somebody will in future say something similar to that.

“We are going to need a lot of documentation that you are not aware that such a practice took place.”

The Chairman of the committee, Abdullahi Mahmud Gaya, assured Nigerians that his committee would get to the root of the toxic fuel importation.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) called for the sack of Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, for alleged inefficiency.

It accused the minister of misleading Nigerians and concealing critical information at the initial stage.

According to the PDP, Sylva has failed in his official duties by refusing to reveal the identities of those involved in the scandal.

The party, in a statement by its spokesman, Debo Ologunagba, said the culprits must be made to pay compensation, particularly to those whose vehicles and equipment were damaged by the toxic fuel as well as bear the cost of the cleanup.

The PDP also demanded that the petroleum ministry be run y competent professionals who can restore sanity in the system.

“The headship of the Petroleum Ministry as presently constituted is peopled with persons with no relevant education, experience and expertise to manage this critical sector that accounts for over 90 per cent of the revenue of the nation,” the party said.

DAPPMAN extends petrol loading hours

Member-companies of Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) yesterday said they would extend their petrol loading hours.

The association’s chairman, Dame Winifred Akpani, in a statement, said they were working with the regulatory authorities to curtail the further distribution of the off-spec fuel.

The scarcity persisted in many cities, including Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, Ilorin, the Kwara capital and Akure, the Ondo State capital.

Queues stretched several kilometres in Akure and other towns in the state.

Some filing stations sold petrol for between N165 and N180, but it was a struggle to buy as the stations were crowded and chaotic. Many of the stations were closed.

The situation was similar in Rivers, where residents spent hours battling to buy fuel at stations along the Obasanjo, Ikwere and Agip roads and Choba axis.

The Kogi State Command of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) arrested two persons and sealed off a petrol station for selling adulterated petrol.

The state Commandant, Suleiman Mafara, while parading the suspects at the command headquarters in Lokoja, said his men arrested a pump attendant and a technician at a petrol station on Okene-Lokoja highway.

He said six drivers who bought the fuel lodged complaints about the damage done to their vehicles.

In Kwara where the scarcity bit hard yesterday, the NSCDC task force on fuel and 50 filing station owners agreed to end hoarding of petrol in the state.

The station owners promised not to engage in any sharp practices forthwith.

Commandant of NSCDC in the state, Makinde Ayinla, said the task force also arrested some black marketers and confiscated their products.

‘Don’t store petrol at home’

The Federal Fire Service warned Nigerians against storing petrol at home.

Acting Controller-General, Federal Fire Service (FFS), Dr. Karebo Pere Samson, in a statement, emphasised that petrol was highly flammable.

“Nigerians must resist the temptation of storing PMS in their homes or other confined places due to the current challenge of scarcity, as doing that will endanger their lives and that of others.

“As we all know, children like to experiment, so storing PMS at home could be putting them at high risk especially if it is within their reach,” he said.

‘Off-spec can be blended’

Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) Executive Secretary, Clement Isong, told The Nation that members now conduct independent tests on supplies.

“We now conduct tests on fuel supplies before we sell to the public. We cannot afford to put contaminated products into the market,” he said.

On the evacuation of the “off spec” petrol from the system, Isong said the contaminated fuel was being blended with the clean fuel supplied.

This, he said, involves using the clean fuel to mix with the “off-spec” fuel until it blends to give the acceptable level of specification.

“With every off-spec fuel, whether it is in a truck or a filling station, or a depot, we blend and test, until we get the appropriate result.

“It all depends on what your tank is like. If your tank is 5000 litres and you can put enough product to blend it, like say 80, 000 litres tank, yes it will blend and we test it and if ok then we sell.

“But if the tank of a station has, say 5, 000 litres of the contaminated product and the tank is full, then you have to pump out the product and take it back to the depot for blending.

“So every situation is different and has to be treated on a case by case basis.”