Over the weekend, several petrol stations in Nairobi ran out of petroleum products, as some major oil marketing companies (OMCs) exhausted their stocks and turned away motorists. The shortage was caused by serious cash-flow challenges triggered by dollar shortages, according to insiders and an industry association.
By Sunday afternoon, several outlets under the Shell brand had run out of super petrol, with attendants giving motorists the option of buying the company’s V-Power brand. The situation deteriorated on Monday, with some of the Shell outlets on Nairobi’s Lang’ata Road reporting total depletion of products, including super petrol, V-Power, and diesel.
Vivo Energy, the largest OMC in the country with a market share of 23.83 percent, having sold 1.36 million cubic meters of fuel products in the financial year to June 2022, did not respond to queries about the scarcity of fuel at its retail outlets. The Petroleum Outlets Association of Kenya (POAK) Chairman, Martin Chomba, explained that there was sufficient fuel at the depots, but the major oil companies were not evacuating it because they did not have sufficient dollars. The scarcity of fuel is likely to impact various sectors of the economy, including transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing, which are heavily reliant on petroleum products.