As the lingering fuel scarcity bites harder in the predominantly riverine Bayelsa, the state government has set up a special monitoring team on the pricing and distribution of petroleum products in the state. The team is made up of the Bayelsa State Petroleum Taskforce (BSPT), the Bayelsa Field Office of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN). It also has the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), the Department of State Services (DSS), as well as the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN) as members. A litre of premium motor spirit otherwise known as petrol is selling between N250 and N300 at filling stations while same cost N400 and N450 at the black market.
Setting up the team at a critical stakeholders meeting on Thursday in Yenagoa, the Deputy Governor, Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, said: “government is taking every necessary steps to end the scarcity of premium motor spirit (PMS) in the state as soon as possible.” Ewhrudjakpo charged the team “to monitor the activities of all the petrol filling stations in the state and ensure that none of them sells above N230, pending when supply sufficiency is restored.” He further directed the team “to enforce compliance with government’s directive that no filling station should sell more than 25 litres to individual buyers in jerry cans until normalcy is restored in fuel supply.” Ewhrudjakpo, who lamented that Bayelsa has the least allocation of petrol in the country from the NNPC, adding “making Bayelsa to pay the same amount with other states for fuel subsidy amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul.” He therefore urged the Federal Government to stop the injustice by ensuring that each state pays for fuel subsidy based on the volume of petrol consumed or number of trucks allocated to it every month.
On the issue of absence of fuel depots which badly affects the fuel supply chain in the state, the Deputy Governor said government would look at the possibility of establishing at least one depot through a public private partnership initiative. Earlier, the Operations Controller of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Bayelsa Field office, Mr. Ogbe Nicholas, urged the public not to panic, assuring that there would be normal fuel supply soon as there is enough PMS now at the loading jetties.
He said the Bayelsa Field Office had already placed an order for 10 trucks of PMS from the Warri and Port Harcourt depots. Mr. Ogbe, however, noted that the absence of any depot in Bayelsa adversely affects supply of the product thereby leaving the state at the mercy of oil marketers.
Also speaking, the Chairman of the Bayelsa State Petroleum Taskforce, Mr. Richman Samuel, said the taskforce had been working round the clock alongside other stakeholders, including the NUPRC and the oil marketers, to ensure that the situation was brought under control. Mr Samuel disclosed that through effective negotiation, fuel price in the wake of the current scarcity was brought down from N300 to N230 per litre in the state and appealed to the marketers to maintain the negotiated price. On his part, the state Chairman of PETROAN, Mr Dukumor Taremi West, while assuring that marketers would not take undue advantage of petrol consumers in the state, stressed the need for relevant agencies to query the whereabouts of the two truckloads of PMS allocated to the NNPC Floating Station at Nembe.
