•As marketers fault NNPC’s claim of supply
Oil marketers yesterday raised an alarm over the kerosene scarcity currently being experienced across the country, saying that the household product was not enough to meet the nation’s demand.
The scarcity, BusinessDay gathered, is worsened by the refusal of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) to pay subsidy on the product previously imported by the NNPC.
Sources close to the Agency said the Federal Government’s inability to gazette the proclamation during the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the product was regulated had made it difficult for the PPPRA to pay any subsidy on it.
They noted that there was no way the NNPC could pay for the product when it was buying it at international prices but was now forced to sell at a regulated price
Olumide Ogunmade, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) in the South West, meanwhile, said claims by the NNPC that there was sufficient kerosene in circulation was not true.
Ogunmade said in Lagos on Wednesday that kerosene scarcity would persist in the country for as long as the high prices of crude oil in the international market remained.
He said it was only the NNPC that could import sufficient kerosene to meet nationwide demand.
Ogumaded said that marketers could not import kerosene for now because of the high cost of kerosene at the international market.
“If there is scarcity, it means NNPC is not importing enough. It would have been easier for marketers to import if kerosene business was deregulated,” he said.
Levi Ajuonuma, group general manager (Public Affairs) of the NNPC, however said there was enough kerosene in circulation.
Ajuonuma, who attributed the high price of kerosene to what he called “panic-buy” by consumers, added that the corporation had flooded the market with the product.
He disclosed that the NNPC, had through its subsidiary, the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited (PPMC), injected into circulation about 50 million litres of kerosene.
To cushion the effect of the scarcity during his regime, Obasanjo had directed that kerosene be imported and sold to Nigerians at N50 per litre when there was an outcry that the product was costlier than a litre of petrol.
Findings however revealed that only a few filling stations had kerosene which they sold for between N128 and N135 per litre instead of the official N50 price.
Officials at both Ejigbo and Mosinmi depots said the product was not available at the depots and that they were awaiting supply from the NNPC.
