The return of long queues for petrol in Lagos, Ogun, and parts of the South-Western states are beginning to resurface. It was gathered that queues weren’t seen in Abuja and Northern states, depots in Lagos are running low on petrol. This situation could lead to challenges in fuel availability and distribution in the affected areas.
The presence of queues at various stations along the Oshodi-Ojodu Berger Expressway and sections of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is causing congestion on the roads. The extended lines of vehicles waiting to buy petrol are impeding the flow of traffic on the service lanes, leading to slower movement in those areas.
It’s clear that the petrol queues have led to varying situations at different filling stations. The North-West filling station had the longest queue with a price of N568 per liter. Other stations like Eterna, NNPCL, TotalEnergies, and Mobil had shorter queues, with prices around N568 to N570 per liter. However, stations like Conoil, Enyo, and Oando at Berger in Lagos had no petrol available for dispensing. Some TotalEnergies stations were operating, while others were locked, and a few stations like Worldoil, Fatgbems, and Quest in Ogun State chose to shut their outlets due to the situation.
The Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Satellite Depot, Akin Akinrinade, said that the depot had not loaded products in the last three weeks.
According to him, even the NNPCL Retail depot is currently operating skeletal dispatching of products. “From our end, the issue has been with the pipeline vandalism which we raised an alarm over since July.
Satellite depot has not loaded any product in the last three weeks, and whenever there is a problem here, it is going to affect Lagos and the whole of South-West.
“Although I don’t know what has been happening in other depots, from what we gathered yesterday, even NNPC Retail has been operating skeletal product dispatching. The NNPC Retail loaded just three to four trucks to Ikoyi on Monday.
No product was dispatched to other places. I don’t know about other depots,” he said. The NNPCL Retail has 21 depots across the country, nine in the North, and 12 in the South.
However, it was reported in December how the company abandoned the depots due to pipeline vandalism, and now relied on private depots to dispatch products.
Recently, NNPCL had been making efforts to put the pipelines in order. One of those efforts was the Satellite depots in Lagos which resumed operations last year, but was again vandalised in July.
Managers of the Ejigbo Satellite Depot had raised the alarm over incessant activities of pipeline vandals on System 2B pipeline in front of Good Luck Estate at Idimu, Alimosho Local Council Development Area of Lagos.
A statement released by Akinrinade at that time, said, “IPMAN Satellite Depot are constrained with heavy heart to announce the vandalism of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited pipeline at Idimu in Alimosho LCDA of Lagos State, in front of Good Luck Estate.
“This continuous vandalism is a setback to the effort of IPMAN and NNPCL to ensure uninterrupted supply of petrol to Lagos and the entire South-West region of Nigeria.”
