Smooth transportation of petroleum products across the country has become a herculean task, due to spate of pipeline vandalism and ageing ruptured pipeline network.

The menace, which the Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC) has had to live with over the years, has forced the downstream oil sector to rely much on road haulage of products.

In 2015 alone, the PPMC, a marketing arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was estimated to have lost about N50 billion to vandalism, which also amounted to about 531 litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).

The products pipeline network has a total length of about 5120 kilometres across the nation but virtually about 80 per cent of it has been out of operation for a number of years, some are up to 10 years.

However, this has contributed largely to uneven distribution of products and shortages experienced in the country. With the recent fuel supply challenges that were triggered by product shortages, the PPMC has taken a bold step to nip the problem in the bud.

During the recent fuel scarcity crisis, the company’s intervention to supply products to marketers on credit significantly relieved the hardship on consumers, who had hitherto experienced long queues at the retail outlets.

Specifically, the company had dispatched about 567 trucks nationwide on the eve of the Christmas in continuation of the special intervention fuel supply for the Yuletide season.

The Operation Controller of Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Mike Osatuyi, confirmed this to The Guardian stating that two trucks loaded with 73,000 litres of petrol were discharged in his filling stations.

According to him, over 300 tankers were also loaded in Capital Oil Depot in Lagos and dispatched to various IPMAN petrol stations across the country.

Osatuyi, who described the PPMC’s initiative as unprecedented, also called on the company to sustain the measure to ensure availability of products at normal price across the country.

“We want to appreciate the Federal Government of Nigeria because NNPC is giving us these products on credit. They loaded the products in trucks and sent them to us. So, there is no reason why we should not sell at official price. Now that the federal government, is ready to partner us, we are also ready to partner with them,” he said.

PPMC receives crude oil from the NNPC Corporate Services Unit called National Petroleum Investments Management Services (NAPIMS). PPMC then supplies the crude oil to the NNPC local refineries. However, petroleum products are sometimes imported to supplement local production when the local refineries are unable to process enough for the country’s needs.

However, incessant vandalism of crude and petroleum pipelines has become a clog in the wheels of smooth distribution of products, but the Managing Director, PPMC, Mrs. Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, said the new strategy would bolster fuel supply and distribution this year and beyond.

She said the company is engaging some contractors that are expected to exploit advanced technologies to tackle the menace of pipeline vandalism, expressing optimism that year 2016 will be free from interruptions.

Nnamdi-Ogbue recently said the company is also working relentlessly to build strategic storage on land and fix the pipeline network to aid smooth distribution of petroleum products across the country.

She added: “Definitely, we are hoping that by the first half of 2016, we will see tremendous benefits from all that we are doing now. One of the things that we hope to do in 2016 is having strategic storage on land. What has happened in the past is that we have strategic storage offshore and so the logistics of bringing them onshore can sometimeS be cumbersome but with pipelines coming back on stream, that is a more efficient way of moving products.

“Haulage and moving trucks all around would be a nightmare but with pipelines working, we would be able to store products and we have actually been pushing crude to Kaduna through the pipelines since Kaduna came on stream and then products to Kano. That actually relieves our haulage system and we think that within the first half of the year, tremendous changes would be seen and Nigerians should take it for granted that they will drive into filling stations and won’t see queues piling up everywhere,” she stated.