Fuel Scarcity: FG Places Surveillance Teams To Petrol Stations

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has placed seven ad-hoc surveillance teams to monitor petrol stations across Lagos State.

The downstream petroleum regulatory agency also confirmed that 37 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) was trucked out with 885 trucks to the stations on Wednesday.

It was gathered that Zonal Operations Controller, NMDPRA, Lagos, Mr Ayorinde Cardoso, made disclosure when he led a surveillance team to some petroleum products retail outlets across the state.

Cardoso assured that normalcy would soon be restored in the state on the fuel situation with efforts being made by all stakeholders in the downstream sector.

According to him, “We have sufficient fuel in Lagos now and we have quarantined the contaminated products in some of the impacted depots.

“Our focus right now is to push out the clean product to all the stations. Right now in Lagos, as of Wednesday morning, we had over 128 million litres in our depots.

“We have five vessels that are currently discharging since Feb. 15, and they will also bring in about 204 million litres.

“So in total, in Lagos, we are looking at about 332 million litres within our system. As of Wednesday, we have trucked out about 37 million litres with 885 trucks.

“This morning we went out with seven ad-hoc surveillance teams to assess the impact of those 885 trucks that were sent out.”

He said the monitoring team was checking the availability of products in the outlets as well as the product quality to prevent infusion of any contaminated PMS which had been quarantined by the authorities.

Cardoso said the officials were also checking for hoarding of products by marketers, stressing that any marketer caught engaging in such activity would be penalised.

He said residents should know that there was no need for panic buying as there was sufficient PMS in Lagos state.