The long queues at petrol stations across the country are not about to disappear, going by the outcome of Wednesday's meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and leaders of trade unions in the oil sector in Abuja.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu told State House correspondents after the meeting that government is working hard to make the products available as well as ensure peace and harmony in the oil sector.
“And let’s be honest; for the five, six months we have been here, NNPC has moved from a 50 per cent importer of products to basically a 100 per cent importer. And the 445 barrels that allocated cover between 50 and 55 per cent importation.
“So, it’s quite frankly sheer magic that we even have the amount of products at the stations. We are looking to see how to get foreign exchange input. The President and I discussed extensively on how to get more crude directed at importation.
“The President will rather have less crude but have individuals in the society suffer less with inconveniences than have more crude and have them continue to suffer. So, we are going to put a new model to enable us increase the pace and get majors as part of the crew of those to bring in more products, so NNPC can go back to its capacity and the majors will take over the balance of importation.
“I think if we do that although I don’t want to put a time frame, I will expect that over the next two months. Of course, you are aware the DSAP programme begins in April so over the next two months we should see a complete elimination of this.
“Our strategy is that whatever is produced in the refineries will not go for sale, we are going to keep it in strategic reserve.
“Because the key problem here is that there is no reserve; anytime there is a gap in supply it goes off.”
He explained that government has dedicated the next few months to shoring up the nation's strategic reserve with whatever is produced by the refineries.
“So that we can pile up reserves and push up the reserves in the nation. Believe me, this is giving me and my team sleepless nights and we are working on it and we are committed to making this go away. Nigerians should please bear with us.
“The meeting with the President was basically to review some concerns. He is trying to find solutions and share thoughts.
“As you know, the President has too many constituencies; first will be politics, second, army and the third, the oil industry. So, matters of this nature touch his heart. And this is the first opportunity that the unions have had to spend time with him as a father.
“So we shared thoughts, areas of concerns and some potential solution and agreed to work together.
“I will probably highlight a few areas. The PIB, the union wants us to work harder and try to get the PIB passed soon. They are worried about the fuel scarcity and want to finally resolve this issue. They are worried about the refineries and are thankful we didn’t sell the refineries without looking to work with them to see how to make the refineries work.
“They are worried about the utilisation of depots and how best to do that, they are worried about all kinds of issues plaguing the oil industry.
“They are worried about job loss in the sector arising from the position of majors, who feel the economy is giving rough ends of the sticks and then try to whittle down staff. And so we are going to be working with the oil majors to ensure that we do not experience the kind of job loss that we are hearing has the potential to occur in the sector.
“A lot of these problems that are on the table were quite frankly there when we came and we are doing the best our to work on them. But we are looking to collaborate, those were the assurances.”
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