Nigerian fuel chaos

THE Federal Government of Nigeria has decided to sanction marketers hoarding fuel in anticipation of fuel price increase.

It says those who refuse to operate will not get fuel supplies from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). In Lagos and other parts of the country monitored on Monday, marketers of petroleum products refused to dispense fuel because they were waiting for government to increase fuel prices.All the stations monitored in Lagos including those run by Total, Oando, Texaco, Conoil, AP and other independent marketers shut their gates.In fact, some marketers in Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Ilorin, Jos, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Yenagoa had adjusted their pump prices in expectation of an increase by the government.In his reaction to the development, Funsho Kupolokun, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, said the corporation had not increased ex-depot prices of petroleum products.He said he was not aware of any plans by government or the corporation to increase ex-depot prices, adding that any marketer who has increased pump prices would have done so illegally.”I will get in touch with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and we shall accompany them to go round and ensure that marketers dispense petroleum products.Any of them caught hoarding products or selling above the approved pump prices will be sanctioned,” he said.It was gathered that the corporation currently imports over 80 per cent of the country’s fuel supply needs, except diesel which is completely deregulated and attracts interest from marketers who are out to make a profit.Throughout 2006, the Federal Government imposed a tight reign on the pump prices of petrol and kerosene, maintaining their prices at N65 per litre, to protect motorists and other consumers of petroleum products from the impact of the volatility in pricing, in the international market.During the period, petrol averaged N80 per litre, while kerosene averaged about the same price, inadvertently leading up to the depletion of the N150 billion Petroleum Stabilisation Fund (PSF).The PSF was set aside by the Federal Government to cushion the impact of attendant differential in price between imported petroleum products (petrol and kerosene) and the domestic pump price.Essentially, marketers of petroleum products who import products and incur a loss, get to make demands on the PSF.Also speaking yesterday, Levi Ajuonuma, General Manager in charge of the NNPC Group Public Affairs Department reiterated what Kupolokun said.He said the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the body charged with superintending the deregulated downstream sector of the oil industry, had not announced any increase in pump prices.Ajuonuma said NNPC views the hoarding of petroleum products by marketers as an act of sabotage and that marketers caught doing this would attract punitive sanctions from the corporation and reassured that the NNPC did not plan to increase ex-depot prices of petroleum products in the immediate future and urged marketers to open their stations to service.Meanwhile, the Oyo State Police Command has arrested 10 people including an aged night guard with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for scooping petroleum products from a vandalised pipeline at Igbo-Oluoje village in Ogo-Oluwa area of the state.The suspected vandals, said to have been siphoning fuel from the village since August last year, were said to have been caught with containers already filled with petroleum products.After efforts by the villagers to check the activities of the vandals failed, they fled the village in apparent fear of fire outbreak.When the villagers first accosted the vandals, they were deceived that they wanted to repair the damaged pipeline to prevent a fire outbreak, and with the night guard in company of the vandals, the villagers believed them.The vandals, however, ran out of luck when the villagers hinted the police late last year after which detectives from Ogbomoso were dispatched to the area.The unsuspecting vandals again stormed the area to scoop fuel when they were nabbed by the detectives with 25 kegs already filled with scooped fuel.Confirming the arrest, Oyo State Police Commissioner, Jonathan Johnson, said the suspected vandals were part of a syndicate scooping petroleum products from the NNPC pipelines.He urged the NNPC to ensure immediate repairs of the burst pipeline to avert possible fire outbreak in the area.Meanwhile in the capital of Lagos a petrol pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into an inferno last week Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighbourhood.At least 260 people died in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa’s biggest petroleum producer.Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos’ Abule Egba neighbourhood surged around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse of missing relatives.”My brother, my brother,” wept Suboke Adebayo, 19, as an unidentified male corpse was loaded into an ambulance.Adebayo, a student, had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling: “I’ve been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone.”A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping herself on the face and clawing her arms in grief over the devastation of bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured to hospitals.”We are still counting [the dead], but there will not be hundreds more,” he said.Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting off petrol in tankers for resale.Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of the 130 million people live in poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy in this major oil exporter.One pilfered can of petrol sold on the black market can earn two weeks’ wages for a poor Nigerian.But tapping also brings frequent accidents.This year, 150 people died in a similar explosion in Lagos, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.This blast, the worst in years, came after thieves opened the conduit during the night but left without fully sealing it, prompting hundreds of nearby residents to rush to collect spurting petrol in cans, buckets and even plastic bags, witnesses said.It was unclear what ignited the fuel just after dawn.”There were mothers there, little children,” said Emmanuel Unokhua, an engineer who lives nearby.”I was begging them to go back.”Unokhua said people splashed fuel on him seeking to chase him away and also doused a few police officers who tried unsuccessfully to control the crowd.”They were not arresting anyone because they had no vehicle to put them in,” Unokhua said bitterly.”There are plenty of vehicles for the dead bodies now.”Bodies lay scattered around the periphery of the site.For many victims, tiny reminders – a child’s flip-flop blistered by the heat, a half-melted plastic bucket – were the only identifiable items in a fused mass of bones, skulls and charred limbs.Flames that nearly incinerated cars and melted electricity lines to pylons kept rescue workers back until the fire began to wane in early afternoon.Crowds of anguished people impeded fire crews and ambulances.The property of Nigeria’s state-owned petroleum company, the pipeline delivers refined fuel for domestic consumption, so the blast was not expected to affect oil pumped for export.Residents blamed greed, graft and poverty for the disaster.www.baltimoresun.com-vanguardngr.comIn Lagos and other parts of the country monitored on Monday, marketers of petroleum products refused to dispense fuel because they were waiting for government to increase fuel prices.All the stations monitored in Lagos including those run by Total, Oando, Texaco, Conoil, AP and other independent marketers shut their gates.In fact, some marketers in Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Ilorin, Jos, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Yenagoa had adjusted their pump prices in expectation of an increase by the government.In his reaction to the development, Funsho Kupolokun, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, said the corporation had not increased ex-depot prices of petroleum products.He said he was not aware of any plans by government or the corporation to increase ex-depot prices, adding that any marketer who has increased pump prices would have done so illegally.”I will get in touch with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and we shall accompany them to go round and ensure that marketers dispense petroleum products.Any of them caught hoarding products or selling above the approved pump prices will be sanctioned,” he said.It was gathered that the corporation currently imports over 80 per cent of the country’s fuel supply needs, except diesel which is completely deregulated and attracts interest from marketers who are out to make a profit.Throughout 2006, the Federal Government imposed a tight reign on the pump prices of petrol and kerosene, maintaining their prices at N65 per litre, to protect motorists and other consumers of petroleum products from the impact of the volatility in pricing, in the international market.During the period, petrol averaged N80 per litre, while kerosene averaged about the same price, inadvertently leading up to the depletion of the N150 billion Petroleum Stabilisation Fund (PSF).The PSF was set aside by the Federal Government to cushion the impact of attendant differential in price between imported petroleum products (petrol and kerosene) and the domestic pump price.Essentially, marketers of petroleum products who import products and incur a loss, get to make demands on the PSF.Also speaking yesterday, Levi Ajuonuma, General Manager in charge of the NNPC Group Public Affairs Department reiterated what Kupolokun said.He said the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the body charged with superintending the deregulated downstream sector of the oil industry, had not announced any increase in pump prices.Ajuonuma said NNPC views the hoarding of petroleum products by marketers as an act of sabotage and that marketers caught doing this would attract punitive sanctions from the corporation and reassured that the NNPC did not plan to increase ex-depot prices of petroleum products in the immediate future and urged marketers to open their stations to service.Meanwhile, the Oyo State Police Command has arrested 10 people including an aged night guard with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for scooping petroleum products from a vandalised pipeline at Igbo-Oluoje village in Ogo-Oluwa area of the state.The suspected vandals, said to have been siphoning fuel from the village since August last year, were said to have been caught with containers already filled with petroleum products.After efforts by the villagers to check the activities of the vandals failed, they fled the village in apparent fear of fire outbreak.When the villagers first accosted the vandals, they were deceived that they wanted to repair the damaged pipeline to prevent a fire outbreak, and with the night guard in company of the vandals, the villagers believed them.The vandals, however, ran out of luck when the villagers hinted the police late last year after which detectives from Ogbomoso were dispatched to the area.The unsuspecting vandals again stormed the area to scoop fuel when they were nabbed by the detectives with 25 kegs already filled with scooped fuel.Confirming the arrest, Oyo State Police Commissioner, Jonathan Johnson, said the suspected vandals were part of a syndicate scooping petroleum products from the NNPC pipelines.He urged the NNPC to ensure immediate repairs of the burst pipeline to avert possible fire outbreak in the area.Meanwhile in the capital of Lagos a petrol pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into an inferno last week Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighbourhood.At least 260 people died in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa’s biggest petroleum producer.Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos’ Abule Egba neighbourhood surged around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse of missing relatives.”My brother, my brother,” wept Suboke Adebayo, 19, as an unidentified male corpse was loaded into an ambulance.Adebayo, a student, had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling: “I’ve been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone.”A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping herself on the face and clawing her arms in grief over the devastation of bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured to hospitals.”We are still counting [the dead], but there will not be hundreds more,” he said.Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting off petrol in tankers for resale.Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of the 130 million people live in poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy in this major oil exporter.One pilfered can of petrol sold on the black market can earn two weeks’ wages for a poor Nigerian.But tapping also brings frequent accidents.This year, 150 people died in a similar explosion in Lagos, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.This blast, the worst in years, came after thieves opened the conduit during the night but left without fully sealing it, prompting hundreds of nearby residents to rush to collect spurting petrol in cans, buckets and even plastic bags, witnesses said.It was unclear what ignited the fuel just after dawn.”There were mothers there, little children,” said Emmanuel Unokhua, an engineer who lives nearby.”I was begging them to go back.”Unokhua said people splashed fuel on him seeking to chase him away and also doused a few police officers who tried unsuccessfully to control the crowd.”They were not arresting anyone because they had no vehicle to put them in,” Unokhua said bitterly.”There are plenty of vehicles for the dead bodies now.”Bodies lay scattered around the periphery of the site.For many victims, tiny reminders – a child’s flip-flop blistered by the heat, a half-melted plastic bucket – were the only identifiable items in a fused mass of bones, skulls and charred limbs.Flames that nearly incinerated cars and melted electricity lines to pylons kept rescue workers back until the fire began to wane in early afternoon.Crowds of anguished people impeded fire crews and ambulances.The property of Nigeria’s state-owned petroleum company, the pipeline delivers refined fuel for domestic consumption, so the blast was not expected to affect oil pumped for export.Residents blamed greed, graft and poverty for the disaster.www.baltimoresun.com-vanguardngr.com