Gasoline Vessels to Commence Discharge of 1 million tons of Fuel

Several vessels, numbering 30, stranded outside the Apapa ports during the strike period are expected to begin offloading their cargoes today, now the strike has been called off.

The tankers estimated to be holding approximately a million tons of refined products valued at $ 900 million were unable to discharge their cargo due to the foregoing dispute between Labour and the Federal Government that led to the closure of ports.

Oil and gas marketers that imported the vessels are struggling to reassess their profit and/or loss margins based on the reduction of the pump price of petrol to N 97 by the President yesterday. Furthermore the cargoes incurred demurrage running into millions of dollars due to the closure of the ports, and inability to discharge on a timely basis.

Traders were also unable to divert the cargo to other markets due to the low quality of the fuel. Nigeria consumes fuel that has a drastically high sulphur content compared to other markets, and so traders were unable to re-route their cargoes to other markets. Also the high volumes consumed in Nigeria are not consumed anywhere else in the region.