Scarcity in Lagos over dirty petrol NNPC recalled

The petrol scarcity currently being experienced in Lagos, especially in the Island axis, is due to current effort by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to recall harmful imported petroleum products, BusinessDay’s findings reveal.

Sources say most of the petrol Nigeria imported under the Direct Sale, Direct Purchase (DSDP) contract through Litasco, an international marketing and trading company of LUKOIL, received by MRS has a high content of methanol and Ethanol, which are outside the official specification of Nigeria’s petrol.

“This product is highly harmful to the market,” a source states.

A senior official in Nigeria’s downstream sector confirms the development, adding that the NNPC is currently doing a product tracing to contain the harmful implication in the market.

“Nigeria should not be doing business with companies with a bad reputation in the market. The implication is very cruel on the consumers of these products, most especially Lagosians,” he says.

With an estimated population of 15.3 million, the roads play host to over 5 million cars and 200,000 commercial vehicles (when the national average stands at 11 vehicles per kilometre). In 2017, Lagos State recorded an average of 227 vehicles per kilometre of the road on a daily basis.

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The issue of dirty petrol is coming at a time when the controversy on the petrol subsidy removal or otherwise still rages on.

Recall, the NNPC has always allayed fears of any hitch in the supply of petroleum products, assuring of their availability, despite reported cases of scarcity of these products, especially petrol, in some parts of the country.

Further findings show that there was a long queue of vehicles on Awolowo Road in Ikoyi, which caused a lot of gridlock on that axis. This situation persisted throughout the weekend and seems to have continued on Monday morning.