Railway to distribute 1.8 million litres of petrol products nationwide

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has indicated readiness to deploy its 40 tank wagons for distribution of 1.8 million litres of petrol nationwide if contacted by marketers.

Its Director of Operations, Niyi Alli, spoke yesterday in Lagos while dismissing reports that the facilities, acquired four years ago to ease the burden on the roads, were lying fallow. He stated that the agency had capacity to carry load 900,000 litres of petroleum products at once.

If rail is considered by marketers, he noted that 28 heavy duty tankers would be taken away off in one fell swoop, while cost of transportation would drop by 30 per cent with an accompanying dip in truck breakdown and crashes.

The NRC, which is facilitating the revamp of the railway system with $41 billion investment, had ordered the 40 wagons, 20 (each with 45,0000 litre capacity) which were delivered in 2012 with the remainders were taken delivery of in 2013 to create an alternative to road infrastructure.

Alli said: “We have been lifting AGO for our operations. The trust is that we put the tank wagons to use to generate customer confidence in our performance. Before we acquired the facilities, customers were complaining about shortages. Since we took delivery of these new ones, no complaints had been received regarding their effectiveness.”

We are also looking at modification that will address safety issues. We have also discussed with independent marketers and we are very optimistic. The NRC is open to anybody who wants to lift petroleum products.”