The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) last Wednesday told the NNPC to allocate more petroleum products to depots outside Lagos.
The Chairman of the South-West chapter of the union, Mr Tokunbo Korodo, made the call in an interview with The Tide source in Lagos.
He said the delay in loading products from Capital Oil’s Tank Farm, Lagos, had led to scarcity of petroleum products.
Korodo said that petroleum tankers came from Benin, Ilorin, Akure, Ibadan, Osogbo, Abeokuta and Ado-Ekiti among others to collect petroleum products at Capital Oil’s tank farm in Apapa.
“These trucks are causing delay for those that want to distribute within Lagos, thereby resulting to non-availability of products at filling stations.
“If the NNPC makes the products available in all its depots in other states, most tankers will not come down to Lagos to collect products.
“The NNPC is using Capital Oil and tank farm to distribute products to filling stations in Lagos and other states.
“Some tankers have been on queue for the past three days before it will get to their turn.
“All these have resulted to scarcity of the product but if the NNPC make use of other depots to distribute the product, the products will be available in all filling stations,” he said.
Meanwhile, long queues of vehicles have returned at petrol stations in most parts of Lagos.
Some petrol station operators said that they have not received new supply in the last one week.
Mr Akeem Sulaiman, Station Manager of Oando Filling Station at Isaga in Ojuelegba, said the queues were caused by concerns over the forthcoming presidential and National Assembly elections.
Sulaiman advised Lagosians to avoid panic buying, saying that in spite of the panic buying petrol stations were selling petrol on daily basis.