No fewer than 4 vessels carrying imported Premium Motor Spirit, popularly referred to as petrol, arrived at seaports located alongside the nation’s borders between Friday, October 18, and Sunday, October 20, findings by The PUNCH present.
In accordance with a doc obtained from the Nigerian Port Authority on Sunday, about 123.4 million litres of PMS had been berthed at two seaports to enhance gasoline provide nationwide.
The most recent improvement confirms an unique report by The PUNCH, which disclosed that oil sellers intend to import the commodity to complement the availability from the $20bn Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
The sellers had said that the availability from the Lekki-based plant was at present inadequate to fulfill home demand.
That they had alleged that the plant was producing about 10 million litres of petrol every day, as towards the 25 million litres that it earlier promised to supply.
In September, The PUNCH additionally reported that sellers imported about 141 million litres of PMS following a hike within the pump costs of petrol produced by the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and launched by the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Firm Restricted.
They mentioned the honest market value following the complete deregulation of the downstream oil sector by the federal government allowed room for PMS imports.
An evaluation of the doc confirmed that the commodities landed on the Apapa port in Lagos and the Calabar port in Cross River State.
Our correspondent, nevertheless, couldn’t verify if any of the vessels belonged to the NNPCL or solely oil entrepreneurs.
The primary cargo carrying 35,000 metric tonnes of PMS allotted to the West African Port Providers berthed at terminal ASPM jetty on Friday, October 18, at 10.13 am.
This was adopted by 37,000 metric tonnes of gasoline assigned to Intership at 3.37 pm. It additionally berthed at terminal ASPM jetty.
As of three:59 pm of the identical day, one other vessel carrying 10,000 metric tonnes of gasoline berthed. It was assigned to Peak Delivery as its agent.
On the Calabar port, a vessel carrying 10,000 metric tonnes of gasoline arrived on the Eco marine terminal on Sunday at 8:02 am.
This implies the 4 vessels introduced in 92,000 metric tonnes.
Going by the conversion charge of 1,341 litres to at least one metric tonne, it, due to this fact, implies that the entrepreneurs introduced in about 123.4 million litres of petrol.
When contacted in an earlier interview, the spokesperson of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, George Ene-Ita, mentioned entrepreneurs with authorised import licenses had been free to import PMS.
He, nevertheless, burdened that the merchandise have to be subjected to 3 main checks by the company.
“The merchandise have to be subjected to our testing protocols on the ports. The merchandise should conform to stipulated requirements earlier than we authorise them to dump to their terminals.
“Additionally, earlier than the smaller vessels convey it additional inland to Nigeria, our folks will fly to the place to see the product and perform some checks to make sure the fitting specification is upheld.
“Assessments are additionally finished on the merchandise’ origins. And when the merchandise are available in earlier than they’re launched to the market, additional checks can be carried out to make sure that they meet the specs,” he said.