Warri — The hardship occasioned by the current scarcity of petroleum products, particularly Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol, has worsened in Warri, Delta State, and its environs as Matrix Energy, the largest private depot in the area, has run out of stock.
The development which has made supplies from other depots grossly inadequate to serve the teeming fuel users has resulted in long queues and outrageous pump prices going up as high as N150 per litre among major and independent marketers dispensing the product.
Vanguard gathered that most marketers with stock shut their pumps in the day time only to open same and sell at outrageous prices to motorists at odd hours when industry regulator, the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, would have closed to avoid sanctions for sharp practices.
A principal official at Matrix Energy who spoke on condition of anonymity said: "It is true that we are out of stock. We exhausted our Q1 allocation and we are working on getting new allocation very soon. I am sure things will be far better as soon as we start selling again."
According to a marketer, "The situation is always like this each time Matrix Energy is out of stock. There will always be this kind of scarcity. As the biggest depot here, without their input, the other ones can't meet our demand.
"The worst part of it is that these other ones always want to exploit the situation by hiking price above the ex-depot price, forcing us to sell above the approved pump price because there is no way I'll buy product for more than N100 per litre and be able to dispense to end users at N86:50."
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