19.4 million litres of fuel arrives this week—Nocma
National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) says about 19.4 million litres of fuel is expected to arrive in Malawi this week.
The fuel is expected to ease fuel shortage as it is estimated to cater for about 11 days as the country needs about 1.7 million litres of fuel per day.
In an interview yesterday, Nocma director of operations Micklas Reuben said from the consignment, about 8.9 million litres is petrol while about 10.5 million litres is diesel.
He said 2.2 million litres of diesel from Nacala in Mozambique is expected to arrive at Nocma Blantyre Strategic Fuel Reserves (SFRs) today and on Wednesday.
Reuben said the rest of the fuel from Beira also in Mozambique and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania will arrive through tankers.
He said: “Most of these volumes are in transit and some are loaded and waiting for dispatch formalities.
“Nocma has taken off and will continue exploring other cheaper modes of fuel transportation, including pipeline to the nearest possible loading locations like Feruka in Zimbabwe from Beira.”
The development comes barely two weeks after the Malawi delegation travelled to Mozambique, to among others, discuss several cooperation agreements with Petromoc, the Mozambique Zimbabwe Pipeline Company, Concord, the Mozambican Ports Authority and the Mozambican Customs.
In 2018, Nocma embarked on the construction of rail siding at its Lilongwe and Blantyre SFRs. Lilongwe SFRs were completed and commissioned in January 2020 while Blantyre SFR rail siding facilities were completed and commissioned in December 2022.
Spot-checks yesterday in all the country’s four regions showed that motorists were still experiencing long queues to access the commodity as few filling stations had fuel.
For instance in Blantyre, there was a long queue at Mount Pleasant Petroda filling station as it was one of the few filling stations that had fuel in the city. In Lilongwe and Mzuzu, the situation was dire as most filling stations had ran out of fuel.
In the past two years, Malawi has been reeling under an acute foreign exchange shortage due to supply and demand imbalances on the domestic foreign exchange market largely, evidenced by low forex supply, declining official foreign exchange reserves and widening spread of rates on the market.
Malawi requires $3 billion per year to meet import requirements, but only produces about $1 billion, according to Reserve Bank Malawi data.
Last month, Nocma noted that while the foreign currency crunch has sharply limited Malawi’s ability to pay for imports, disruptions to the fuel import route mix had worsened supply problems in the country.
Reuben is on record as having observed that Malawi was taking longer to land fuel within its borders than usual, thereby exacerbating supply challenges.
Malawi’s fuel import route mix, as stipulated by the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera), requires that 70 percent of the country’s fuel imports come through Mozambique’s ports with Beira processing 50 percent and Nacala facilitating 20 percent while the remaining 30 percent is supposed to be hauled through Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
