Patrick Ugeh
14 April 2008
Abuja — Describing the intermittent shortage of petroleum products as unacceptable, Minister of State for Energy (Petroleum), Mr Odein Ajumogobia, has advocated urgent establishment of a strategic reserve of a fairly long duration as the way out.
The minister, who apologised to Nigerians for the recent hardship over fuel scarcity, said lack of adequate strategic storage capacity was one of the underlying deficiencies in the system.
"Imagine we were at war and there was a blockade, the country would grind to a halt. So it is a matter of urgency that we should develop this capacity. For the future, we are looking at what we've done wrong, what we are doing wrong, what we should do right. I can assure you that this administration will do what is necessary to ensure that this (fuel scarcity) doesn't recur," he said.
Ajumogobia traced the scarcity to the 20 per cent ethanol in fuel imported and distributed by a marketer, which caused problems for motor vehicles.
He said the cargo was quarantined and to protect consumers, the authorities resorted to testing all cargoes specifically for ethanol.
"This was the beginning of a series of events which eventually culminated in shortages. As a result of the stricter testing of PMS (premium motor spirit or petrol) for ethanol content in particular, oil marketers, including PPMC, presented fewer cargoes for clearance and discharge, in the knowledge that these cargoes were laden with different percentages of ethanol."
According to him, the Petroleum Pipelines Marketing Company(PPMC), which accounts for 90 per cent of productimportation, presented documents for 13 vessels ladenwith about 400,000 MT of PMS during the week endedApril 04, 2008. Out of these, he said only two vesselswere presented for clearance and discharge at jettiesin the Lagos area.
"The situation was made worse by the fact that storagecapacity was further limited, because the 20 per centethanol PMS was yet to be evacuated from storage tanksto make room for approved specification PMS.
"In addition, major marketers failed to present the required number of trucks to evacuate products from Warri and Port Harcourt refineries. The situation was further compounded by an unfortunate break in the major Atlas Cove-Mosimi line," he said.
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