Barely few months after Lagos and other parts of the country recovered from acute fuel scarcity, routine maintenance of Ejigbo Depot, which belongs to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday, created panic among fuel marketers.
THISDAY gathered that owing to the maintenance at the depot, loading of petroleum products were temporarily disrupted, resulting in panic buying by anxious Lagos motorists.
However, Zonal Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, told THISDAY that the situation did not completely cripple loading activities at the depot.
But the depot, which normally loads up to 200 trucks barely loaded up to 12 trucks yesterday.
A top official of the depot however, assured that the situation would normalise today adding that they have recorded appreciable progress in the maintanance exercise.
A tanker driver, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told THISDAY that tanker drivers were not on strike, but rather that the maintenance was disrupting their operations.
They have enough petrol in stock. They also have diesel and kerosene. But only few depots have kerosene and are rationing it to tanker drivers. Due to maintenance, Ejigbo is rationing and instead of loading up to 200 trucks, they loaded 10 - 20 trucks,?he said.
It was also gathered that the depot has Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly called petrol in stock but the maintenance work was affecting loading at the depot, which also pumps products to other depots in the state.
However, loading of petroleum products was going on smoothly in other parts of Lagos.
Manager in charge of Public Affairs at NIPCO Plc, Mr. Lawal Tafeek, told THISDAY that tanker drivers were loading at the company facility.
He also assured that the maintenance work at Ejigbo would not cause scarcity.