Endless fuel scarcity: Nigerians desire solution

Nigeria is the Africa’s largest oil producer and the Continent’s largest economy, but the country has been paralysed by fuel shortages. One would be curious enough to ask why a traditional oil producing nation like Nigeria cannot run refineries at optimal levels for domestic consumption.

It is quite disheartening that the four refineries in Port-Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna are functioning at a sub-optimal capacity and the country continues to spend substantial foreign exchange to import fuels. Meanwhile, because domestic refining in Nigeria cannot meet up with domestic consumption, Nigeria resorted to importation of refined petroleum product. The four refineries with a combined capacity in excess of 445,000 barrels per day could only refine a mere 80,757, metric tonnes of petroleum products. These are 19,967 of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS or petrol 53,223.4 MT of Automotive Gas Oil, AGO or diesel and 7,567 MT of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG or cooking gas.

The rest of volume of 8.1million MT of petroleum was imported. Not only does Nigeria import refined products, the process of importation is fraught with irregularities with high level of corruption including the inflation of figures of imported products (in order to make high subsidy claims) at huge cost to both the government and Nigerian citizenry.

It would be recalled that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), some years ago, indicated interest in the building of three new green refineries with a total capacity of one million barrels each in three states of the federation but has so far remained a mere dream even as the multinational oil firms such as Shell Nigeria, Exxon mobil, Total, Agip and Addax have continued to shun investment opportunities in refinery projects in the country due to absence of incentives.

While the Nigerian government plays second fiddle with the implementation of World Bank remedy, other OPEC member states, including Saudi-Arabia, Libya, Iran Kuwait, United Arab Emirate (UAE) Algeria, Qatar and Venezuela, were fast expanding their refineries both home and abroad. Libya and Kuwait for instance, own offshore refineries in Europe where crude oil is shipped to refined and dispensed to consumers from fuel stations in Europe.

However, fuel scarcity has become a phenomenon in Nigeria; despite that it affects the nation’s economy, yet government is yet to find lasting solution to curb its re-occurrence.

The incessant fuel scarcity has become so worrisome, as queues at filling stations have become longer and people have resorted to queuing as early as 3:00am in order to get fuel to enable them go about their businesses. Most private filling stations now take advantage of the fuel scarcity to sell fuel at #150 and #200 per litre, which is very appalling. What this means is that the body in charge has dropped the ball, because they are lagging behind in their responsibilities towards checkmating the anomalies. Yet government continues to console Nigerians with promises and apologies rather than finding lasting solution to the problem.

Movement of goods and services has become very difficult and this has forced prices of food items and other commodities up steeply, thereby making life very unbearable for Nigerians. The effect of all this on the already ailing economy as well as on productivity can better be imagined. President Muhammadu Buhari, as the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources, is hereby challenged to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians by resolving the fuel scarcity crisis and ending this shame of a blessed nation.

Temitayo Taylor