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Fuel tankers wreak havoc as NNPC depots sit idle

Fuel-tanker-accidents

File photo: Fuel tanker accidents in Ikorodu and Iyana-Ipaja, Lagos. Photos: Saheed Olugbon

Poor maintenance and vandalism have left many government-owned fuel depots and pipelines idle for years, with the number of tankers on the roads increasing and wreaking havoc, ’FEMI ASU writes

Oghenero Genza and his friend had a close shave on March 7, 2018, when a petrol tanker smashed their car while they were on a trip from Warri to Asaba, in the oil-rich Delta State.

The accident is one of the thousands of fuel tanker crashes the nation has recorded on its roads in recent years.

“It happened at Agbarho; a fuel tanker was coming out of the NNPC filling station on reverse. So, we were asked to stop, and we did. The tanker hit the car behind us from the side; the car went into the middle of the road, and the tanker bent to the left. One side of the tanker climbed our car while the other side was on the demarcation in the middle of the road,” Genza, a radio presenter at Kpoko 100.5FM and comedian, told our correspondent.

He said he struggled to remove his seat belt, opened the door and hopped out. “My friend was even almost stuck on the driver’s seat. So, I helped to pull him out,” he added.

Unlike Genza and his friend who came out alive, many Nigerians have been killed in similar accidents involving fuel tankers.

From the North to the South, lives and property have been destroyed in many tanker crashes.

On February 6, this year, eight people lost their lives at Onigari village, Ogun State, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, when an articulated truck hit a loaded petrol tanker, resulting in a fire.

On November 24, last year, 19 passengers died in a fire that broke out when a bus collided with a fuel truck on the Njaba Bridge along the Owerri-Orlu Expressway, Imo State. A least 13 persons died on July 28, when a bus and a petrol tanker collided at the Felele area of Lokoja, Kogi State.

On December 8, 2016, a petrol tanker rammed into some passenger vehicles and exploded along the Benin-Agbor Road, Edo State, with 22 persons dead and three others injured. Six days before, a petrol tanker skidded off the road and exploded in the transit town of Tegina in Niger State, killing at least 14 people.

The Federal Road Safety Corps, in an emailed response to questions from our correspondent, said 11,931 tankers and trailers were involved in road crashes from 2007 to 2016, leading to 10,409 deaths and 32,922 injuries.

The FRSC said in response to the spate of crashes involving tankers/trailers nationwide in 2015 that it introduced the Safe to Load programme for safe operation and distribution of major petroleum products.

But fuel tanker accidents remain a major cause for concern.

On February 7, last year, a public hearing was held on the need for government to address the menace of accidents involving fuel tankers by the House of Representatives’ ad-hoc committee, constituted specifically to proffer solutions to the challenge.

The Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara, noted that despite legislations and concerted efforts by government agencies, road traffic unions and associations to halt such accidents, tankers and trailers contributed a good number of deaths recorded on the roads.

This investigation shows that tankers, which were introduced to address problems with refineries and broken pipelines/idle depots, have not been the boon they were intended to be.

“The proliferation of petrol tankers on Nigerian roads is a sad reflection of societal dysfunction and governmental ineptitude,” an energy expert and professor of law at Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University, Emeka Duruigbo, told our correspondent in an emailed response to questions.

He noted that the tankers’ movement “causes massive inconvenience and poses danger to regular road users.”

The original design for fuel distribution

Between 1976 and 1989, the government, through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, built three refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, in addition to an existing one in Port Harcourt, which was built by Shell and BP in 1965 (later bought over by the NNPC).

The NNPC installed a network of pipelines across the country, totalling over 5,000 kilometres in length, to facilitate crude supply to the refineries and products evacuation from them.

The network consists of 4,315 km of multi-product pipelines and 701km of crude oil pipelines, inter-connecting 22 fuel depots, the four refineries, and the jetties at Atlas Cove and Warri.

The depots and pipelines are operated by the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the NNPC.

A former board member, NNPC, Alhaji Abdullahi Bukar, told our correspondent that the facilities were built to enable the distribution of products by pipeline to depots to make the journey to retail outlets easier and cheaper.

 “At each node, depots were built to store and disburse the AGO, PMS, and DPK. Only the LPFO and the LPG were to be transported long distance by road. Tankers were intended to distribute from depots to the customer outlets and other nearby private depots,” Bukar added.

But road tankers have long become the major means of transporting petroleum products in the country. Products are taken from Lagos to as far as Maiduguri, Sokoto and Kaduna by road.

The President, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Mr. Igwe Achese, said while growing up, he saw petroleum products being transported by rail from the refineries to some parts of the country.

“But the rail lines that are connected to the refineries have all been abandoned since the military administration of Babangida,” he added.

Depots, pipelines rusting away

Our correspondent’s findings reveal that only seven out of the 22 government-owned depots are currently fully functional while many of the remaining depots have not been operating for a long time.

The idle depots are in Aba, Benin, Enugu, Gusau, Gombe, Ibadan, Ilorin, Jos, Kano, Makurdi, Maiduguri, Minna, Ore and Yola.

According to the investigation, products are currently being pumped to only Warri, Port Harcourt, Ejigbo, Mosimi and Suleja depots. Calabar depot, which can only be supplied products by marine vessels as it is not linked by the pipeline network, is also working.

Kaduna depot, it was gathered, has been erratic. The Kaduna refinery, from which products are supplied to it, was down in the six months to November last year.

Imported products moved into Lagos through the coastal vessels are discharged primarily at the Atlas Cove Depot where they are received into storage tanks for onward pumping to Mosimi, Ejigbo, Ibadan, Ilorin and Ore depots.

When our correspondent visited Ore depot in Ondo State on February 27, 2018, it was gathered that the depot had not been operational for over eight years.

Some of the stations along the road to the depot were either out of business or without products to sell. Some were selling petrol above the official pump price of N145 per litre.

The depot, which has eight tanks – four for petrol, two each for diesel and kerosene, supplies Ondo, parts of Ekiti, Osun, Kogi and Edo states.

It was inaugurated on August 31, 1979 and was rehabilitated and re-activated on June 24, 2006, after sitting “idle for more than eight years.”

The Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Ore depot branch, Mr. Shina Amoo, said the unavailability of products at the depot had impacted negatively on virtually all the stakeholders.

“Tanker drivers go to Lagos, Ogara and Warri in Delta State to get products. A loading that could be done within an hour or two, they may be on it in Apapa for a week, causing congestion, accidents and damage to our roads,” he said.

In Lagos, there are more than 50 private depots, mostly located in Apapa, where many roads have become an eyesore as tankers and other heavy duty vehicles hold sway.

Amoo said the shutdown of the Ore depot had taken a toll on job creation in Ondo, adding, “If the depot could be back on stream now, it would create more than 10,000 jobs directly and 100,000 jobs indirectly.

“Many stations are shut down because a station owner who could buy 11,000 litres from the depot in Ore and sell in his station may not be able to afford to get the product from a distant place. He will need money to get a full truck and transport it to Ore.”

He said if products were being loaded at the depot, marketers in the state and others near it would not sell petrol above N145 but could even sell below that because there would be serious competition.

Our correspondent gathered that many of the pipelines would have been ruptured and needed replacement, considering their age and lack of proper maintenance.

“Some of them are obsolete. They have corroded and ruptured, and then they are being vandalised. If you pump five million litres of product, you may end up getting only 5,000 litres,” Achese added.

The Nigeria Natural Resource Charter said in a note to our correspondent that pipeline failures (ruptures) had occurred due to corrosion and/or over-pressure.

“Cases include Warri-Kaduna and Warri-Benin products pipelines. Water is used to displace products and retained in pipelines when not in use; this tends to accelerate internal corrosion, thus further compounding their integrity,” the NNRC said.

Road tankers to the rescue?

The neglect of many of the NNPC depots saw the country increasingly resorting to private tank farms and road tankers for the supply and distribution of products.

The state of the nation’s 445 million barrels-per-day refineries, through which many of the depots are fed, has worsened over the years.

Data obtained from the Department of Petroleum Resources showed that the capacity utilisation at the refineries, including the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources’ 1,000bpd refinery, plunged to as low as 4.85 per cent in 2015 from 23.03 per cent in 2011, resulting in increased petroleum products’ imports.

“The total number of tankers is on the high side. We have more than 10,000 tankers that are plying our roads. So when you have that number of trucks plying the roads with the volume of products they transport every day, the impact will be huge on the roads,” Achese said.

The President, Petrol Tanker Drivers branch of NUPENG, Mr. Salimonu Oladiti, said the increase in the nation’s population and fuel consumption had contributed to the rise in the number of tankers.

The increase in the number of filling stations in the country from 27,238 in 2015 to 31,220 in 2016, according to the DPR data, meant that more tankers would be required to service them.

“I don’t know whether we know the number of tankers we have. But I believe it is more than 10,000 tankers. There is no city or town that my members are not covering in the country,” Oladiti said.

The Petroleum Equalisation Fund (Management) Board, which was established in the mid-70s to ensure uniform pricing for petroleum products nationwide, normally tags tankers involved in its national transportation allowance or equalisation, inter-district and bridging schemes.

“Currently, we have tagged more than 6,000 trucks. But there are those who do what they call local lifting like within Lagos, Warri, and Port Harcourt, and they don’t care to come and get their trucks registered and tagged with us,” the General Manager, Corporate Services, PEF, Mr. Goddy Nnadi, told our correspondent.

According to the immediate past Chairman, NUPENG, South-West, Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, the powers that be are part of the owners of tankers.

“How can the number of tankers reduce when the business is still there? If they pump products to all the depots, tankers would not be going far and the risks would be drastically reduced,” he said.

 Blame poor maintenance and vandalism

The NNRC is of the view that the main integrity threat to the pipelines is not their age, but lack of maintenance.

It said “Pipelines typically last way beyond their initial design life, if they are well maintained. It appears that the PPMC does not have a unit capable of managing the entire spectrum of pipelines operations, particularly those related to technical maintenance. Even basic security surveillance of the pipelines’ Right of Way is severely compromised.”

The NNPC, in its latest monthly report, said a total of 1,120 vandalised pipeline points were recorded between January and December 2017.

“These facilities fell into disuse and became moribund due to inadequate maintenance and primarily due to outright stealing of products in transit,” Bukar said.

He said the security system and police methods were inadequate to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Korodo said the shutdown of many of the PPMC depots and pipelines had put the NNPC at the mercy of private depot owners.

The NNPC has throughput agreements with some private depot owners for the use of their storage tanks and load-out facilities for product reception and distribution.

“That is why we have a surge of tankers in Lagos. Tankers from all parts of the country come to Lagos to pick products. For example, Benin depot has been idle for over eight years, and the facility is rusting away. It is lack of maintenance culture,” Korodo said.

According to the DPR, there are 102 private depots in the country: 79 owned by independent marketers (42 in Lagos, 12 in Port Harcourt, 11 in Calabar, five in Warri, three in Abuja, one each in Kaduna and Akwa Ibom; and 23 belong to major marketers (15 in Lagos, three in Abuja, four in Port Harcourt and one in Warri).

PEF: Doing more harm than good?

“Poor infrastructure maintenance certainly is not the only problem that encourages road transportation of fuel,” a Senior Governance Officer with the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Aaron Sayne, told our correspondent in an emailed note.

He cited government policies and practices such as fuel subsidy and PEF as creating avenues for fraud, smuggling, etc. by encouraging the movement of petrol tankers around the country.

Over 40 years ago, the Federal Government established PEF with the primary responsibility of reimbursing marketing companies for any losses suffered by them as a result of sale of petroleum products at uniform prices throughout the nation.

This, according to PEF, followed the severe fuel shortages experienced between 1974 and 1975.

Following the introduction of bridging scheme by PEF, the nation has consistently seen an increase in road tankers across the country.

The involvement of a large fleet of road tankers aids the smuggling of petroleum products across the nation’s borders.

Bridging is the movement of petroleum products by long distance road haulage (that is above 450km) from a depot/refinery to another depot experiencing scarcity.

According to PEF, bridging scheme was originally introduced as a temporary measure to encourage and support marketers in transporting products nationwide when there is a pipeline break or where the refinery feeding the depot(s) is experiencing products scarcity or is shut for turnaround maintenance.

But the scheme has taken root over the years as the state of the refineries worsened and many pipelines feeding the depots were abandoned.

The PEF spokesman, Nnadi, said the initial projection was to have a maximum of 10 per cent of total petroleum products bridged. “But now, sometimes, it hits above 80 per cent to 100 per cent,” he added.

He said PEF had started working on “rail equalisation,” adding that the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners “is collaborating with some private investors to invest in the movement of products by rail from the South to the North.”

 “A train can take as much as what 20 to 30 trucks will take at the same time. That will reduce the pressure on the road and avert accidents,” Nnadi added.

The Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, said, “We are highly worried about the number of tankers transporting products across the country.

“The bridging, to a large extent, is even a constraint in itself because part of what contributed to shortage in the past was this bridging system. It affects the roads and a lot of things,” he added.

Tackling the fuel tanker menace

The FRSC told our correspondent that it “is concerned about the state of the articulated vehicles plying the roads, and the number, when you consider the pressure on the roads.”

Bukar said, “A pipeline system to deliver products which is the cheapest and safest means of distributing products everywhere in the world was built but we, as a country, did not allow it to work as intended.

“This resulted in our use of tankers to serve the purpose with the consequent increase in dangers from accidents, spills and fire as well as being the most expensive means of delivery.”

The government, he said, should foster a public-private partnership to rehabilitate and extend the facilities and bring them back into use.

“The NNPC-PPMC and IPMAN and MOMAN need to get together and rescue this important segment of our infrastructure,” he said.

Bukar said the law enforcement must find ways to make pipeline vandalism and stealing of products unattractive.

Achese wants the government to urgently declare a state of emergency in the downstream sector and roll out measures to address “this ugly situation of sabotage that is being caused by some individuals in the corridors of power.”

“The government should ensure the best model of pipeline structure is established to secure our pipelines,” he said.

An ex-NNPC executive and Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, International Energy Services Limited, Dr. Diran Fawibe, said the pipelines and depots should be upgraded, and more depots should be built across the country.

“By now, we should be able to move some products via the rail. Unless these things happen, we will continue to have proliferation of tankers on our roads with the attendant risks and problems that we are currently encountering.”

According to him, the business of pipelines should have been taken out for third parties to undertake.

“They will engage in establishing pipeline network and they will manage such pipelines on a throughput basis,” said Fawibe.

In its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, a medium-term plan for 2017-2020, the Federal Government said it would reduce its stakes in the refineries, depots and pipelines, among others.

The head of the tanker drivers’ union, Oladiti, also highlighted the need to reduce the number of tankers on the road.

He said, “If tankers reduce along our highways, it is good because it will make our roads last longer. When you are thinking about the country, don’t think about your selfish interest. If I want to be selfish, I will say no. But if there is something that can add value to our country, and help to protect lives and property, I think we are supposed to subscribe to it.”

The NNPC spokesman, Ughamadu, also said the corporation recently rehabilitated Kano, Ibadan, Aba and Atlas Cove depots, adding, “Plans are on to rehabilitate Enugu, Ilorin, Makurdi and Ore depots. We want all the depots to be rehabilitated and we are working towards that. But we must have guarantee from the areas where these pipelines cut across to assist us in surveillance.”

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