The Petroleum and Product Marketing Company (PPMC) may this week sanction major marketers of petroleum products over allegations of sabotage and diversion of products meant for Abuja, a situation that is causing fuel scarcity in the nation’s capital.
In Abuja, fuel queues have been on the increase despite huge allocation of products to the nation’s capital prompting the PPMC to launch an investigation into where the products were being diverted.
The PPMC is particularly worried about the diversion of its product and the source of the products being sold on the Suleija/Kaduna road.
An official of the PPMC said that a total of 111 trucks was released into Abuja city on Thursday but with only few petrol station dispensing fuel by the weekend.
Rather than sell the fuel to motorists in Abuja, some marketers who got the fuel were believed to have diverted such allocations to Suleija and Kaduna where they are sold at very high rates.
The PPMC official who confirmed that major marketers of products would have to be seriously warned and sanctioned said, “We released a total of 111 trucks into Abuja city alone on Thursday. I don’t believe that all could have been sold by yesterday to warrant the long queue we have having today [Saturday] in Abuja.
“What we are suspecting is that most of the volume have been diverted outside Abuja because if one takes a drive on Suleija/Kaduna road, you will see that all the stations along the road are selling despite the fact that we didn’t supply them.
“111 trucks can refuel a total of 73,260 vehicles at the rate of 50 litres per vehicle. This week alone, we have dispatched 386 trucks inside Abuja alone and that can refuel 254,760 vehicles at the rate of 50 litres per vehicle. This is sabotage”
It was gathered that security agencies might be invited to look into the alleged diversion even in the bid to sanction the erring marketers to serve as deterrent to others.
The decision to deal with the erring markets is said to be because as long as the black markets exists outside Abuja and the “saboteurs” still exists, the petroleum product would always find its way to the market where a litres is sold at N120
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