Major oil marketers to address petroleum downstream accidents

Bothered by the risk tendencies in petroleum products movement across the country, oil marketers under the aegis of Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), have decided to minimise cases of accidents on road networks and promote efficient transportation of products.

MOMAN insisted that movement of products from one point to another constituted a major part of its operations, noting that about 95 per cent of the incidents which occur in the downstream industry were through road accidents in the course of product movement from one point to another.

In a document by MOMAN obtained bt The Guardian, the association revealed that a recent study of 120 accidents that happened since 2014 to the recent accident at Otedola Bridge in Lagos, showed that 94 of the accident cases were rollover, 16 collisions and 10 fires.

“All these accidents would have been avoided if the right things were done and controls put in place were adhered to.

MOMAN is now using internal and external actions to structure and assess initiatives in the field of safety,” it explained.

MOMAN expressed belief in self-assessment and developing standards among members to exchange information on best practices and exploit the gains made by members to improve its transportation system; thus reducing fatality to zero as daily operations continues.

It said: “Annual technical evaluation of the equipment (tractor and the tank) are carried out in some of MOMAN members site to ensure only trucks certified and approved for operations at these centres are used for loading operations.

Technical specification of the vehicle is used to improve equipment quality. This covers the entire fleet and has two main objectives: Improve safety of the equipment and transportation of the product; and define the construction of the tanks by local contractors.”

MOMAN said it is pushing for and engaging necessary stakeholders to define standards on the age of the tractor and tank in service, adding that members are also encouraged to adapt to new tools of improving transport road safety.

It said, “Tools such as OBC (Outboard Computers), cameras and route survey by Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping have been helpful in checking driver behavior, over speeding and blind spots identification during journey management.

“MOMAN believes information sharing among members on best practices will help improve safety and sustainability in the downstream business as there is no market share or competition on safety.

We have set up a committee to self-regulate members on safe-to-load in our loading depots in a bid to enforce compliance to minimum safe-to-load check and self-regulation.

“On external actions, we acknowledge the awesome work done so far by the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).

We recently collaborated with FRSC to develop minimum safe-to-load grid for the downstream industry.

The FRSC is in MOMAN depots ensuring compliance to safe-to-load check before trucks are loaded and allowed to leave the depots during daily loading operations.

“At MOMAN, the driver plays a major role in safety management and we commit to the training of drivers to improve their behavior and reaction while driving.

The objective is to provide drivers with full training both in terms of driving practice and safety checks of their vehicles.

These training raises the driver’s awareness on journey management, the vision of the road, reactions at the wheel, health, environment and security.”

The association also revealed that it is collaborating with the Apapa Grid Lock Task Force set up by the Federal Government to ensure that the access roads to Apapa are free at all times.

It, therefore, directed its transporters/drivers to make use of holding bays/ truck parks, while discouraging the parking of trucks along the road to improve safety, security and free flow of movement around the Apapa axis.

MOMAN recently partnered with the Lagos State Safety Commission in the organisation of the First Safety conference in the downstream industry, where it shared safety experiences and made major presentations and discuss.

As a practical demonstration, the safety Commission visited the Driver Training School at Ibadan belonging to one of MOMAN members.

“The objective was to collaborate closely with the Lagos State Safety Commission in assisting the commission on driver training and technical truck audit/vetting of articulated trucks that ply our roads,” MOMAN hinted.