Inadequate supply, cause of fuel scarcity in South East – DPR

The Department of Petroleum Resources in Enugu State has attributed the current scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit in the South East Zone to inadequate supply of the product.
The Corporate Manager of the department, Peter Ijeh, made the disclosure in Enugu on Tuesday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria.
Ijeh said the scarcity had led to non-compliance of some major and independent marketers to the new government pump price of the product.
He said supply in the five states of the South East of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo had dropped drastically against what it used to be previously.
“Ebonyi State used to have supply of 25 trucks of petrol a day, but that has reduced to four trucks, while Enugu, which used to have the supply of 80 trucks, reduced to 40 as well as three other states of the zone,” he said.
Ijeh said the department was collaborating with the police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps to ensure that petrol dealers complied with the government directive on new pump price.
He said the department had started to sanction stations that hoarded the product and sold above N86.
A NAN correspondent who monitored the level of compliance to the new pump price reports that many filling stations have yet to adjust their pump price to the new rate.
Some of the filling stations visited sold the product at between N130 and N150 per litre.
A station attendant at Chris Tee Oils, Ekene Okpara, told NAN that the station bought fuel from the major marketers at a high price and sold at N130 in order to break even.
Okpara alleged that some mega stations in the state also hoarded fuel, while those that sold at the new pump price closed in not less than two hours.
The station manager at Oando filling station at Uwani, Ebere Ogazie, described the new pump price as a “welcome development”, but complained about the non-availability of the product.
Ogazie said the station would comply with the new price when it received supply.
NAN reports that Oando, Total, Master Energy and some NNPC mega stations are selling the product at the new rate but have long queues of prospective buyers.
NAN.