ADDIS ABABA– A gap filling task is underway to balance the country’s petroleum demand-and-supply chasm ascribable to artificial problems, Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise (EPSE) disclosed.
Alemayehu Tsegaye Communication Higher Expert within the Enterprise told to The Ethiopian Herald that there are times the supply strikes balance with the demand as per set plan. Over the span of the past 11 months, EPSE had supplied about 3.5 million liter petroleum. Its plan was to supply about 3.8 million liter. This indicates that it had covered about 91 percent of its plan.
In the country there are different petroleum depots. There are 13
different storage areas with an aggregate capacity of holding about 397 million
liter petroleum. This
capacity notwithstanding, there are still supply-and-demand gaps, so EPSE has
built a big depot in Awash .The depot has a capacity to store about 33 million
liter and it has already started giving services.
On top of this, another depot around Dukem area is on the pipeline. It is expected to see the light of day within three years. It covers around ten hectares of land. It will store about 300 million liter. Now, the nation is not storing aviation fuel, so this depot will also address the problem.
Adding, EPSE is also skimming at other areas to build other storages. It is trying to build more modern and big capacity tankers with the next five years.
He stated, there is a plan to connect the depots with railways. Petroleum will be transported from Awash, Dukem and Dire Dawa projects through train. The enterprise has fulfilled the necessary facilities to move petroleum through train for Awash depot .Other tasks are expected from the Railway Corporation.
The demand for petroleum has been displaying an upward swing by ten percent on average every year. The graph shows the demand is always increasing, so the enterprise is striving to fill gaps. And the problem will be redressed fully after the expansion work of depots, Alemayehu stated.
He also indicated that presently the country is simply using only the Djibouti port. Therefore, down the road it has a plan to use more Eritrean ports as well as Barbara ports. This will also contribute towards bridging the supply-demand gap. Currently, Benzene, white naphtha, aviation fuel, Kerosene and light and heavy black naphtha are found among the imported petroleum.
The Ethiopian Herald, June 16/2019
BY GENET FEKADE
