There are indications that the federal government has issued additional import allocations to enable about 37 importers bring in more fuel into the nation for domestic consumption.
Investigations showed that the importation is targeted at preventing fuel scarcity which had threatened the nation to wards the end of the previous administration. Reuters confirmed that, “Nigeria has issued additional import allocations for at least 300,000 tonnes of gasoline for the remainder of the third quarter, oil traders said on Monday.”
“The allocations, which enable the companies that hold them to import fuel under the country’s subsidy regime, are in addition to the 1.5 million tonnes issued for the third quarter earlier this year to at least 37 importers.
“The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA issued the new allocations late last week, but traders said the amounts were only given to companies that had already fulfilled their previous allocations,” the agency added.
It maintained that some of the companies that received the initial allocations had struggled to import, traders said, due to delays to subsidy payments from the government.
“Funding is still an issue, but some of these companies have strong balance sheets,” one trader said. Nigeria is almost entirely reliant on imports for its daily consumption of some 40 million litres of gasoline.
Despite efforts to restart local refineries, the 125,000 barrel per day, bpd, Warri refinery has remained closed after issues getting crude oil to the plant. Industry sources said the others were struggling to produce at planned capacity.
Additionally, President Muhammadu Buhari last month officially cancelled deals for offshore processing and crude oil swaps for refined products, both of which were intended to help the country get the fuels it needs.
The NNPC had commenced the unbundling of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited, its subsidiary in order to boost domestic supply.
Kachikwu who made this disclosure during an official tour of the Okrika Jetty and the Port Harcourt Refining Company Limited raised hope for fuel supply in the nation.
Kachikwu stated that the PPMC would be split into a pipelines company that would focus primarily on the maintenance of the over five thousand kilometers pipelines of the Corporation; a storage company that would maintain all the over 23 depots and a products marketing company that would market and sell petroleum products.
He informed that the move would ensure that the right set of skills were rightly positioned and the number of leakages in terms of pipelines break and products loss were reduced to the barest minimum.
The GMD noted that the ongoing phased rehabilitation of all the state owned refineries would be given an accelerated vigour with the aim of reducing petroleum products importation into the country, adding that at full capacity, all the refineries could supply only 20 million litres of premium motor spirit otherwise known as petrol on a daily basis.
Kachikwu affirmed that the refineries would not be sold but joint venture partners with established track records of success in refining would be invited to support the running of the refineries in order to ensure efficiency.
He stated that efforts are in top gear to fix all the crude and petroleum products pipelines across the country stressing that the Nigerian Airforce would be engaged to provide aerial survey of the pipelines, the Nigerian Army Engineering corps to fix and police the pipelines and the Nigerian Navy to provide marine surveillance for the network of pipelines.
Kachikwu commended the NNPC’s engineers for the successful execution of the ongoing phased rehabilitation of the refineries while urging them to prepare a replacement programmes for obsolete spare parts of all the Corporation’s installations in order to avoid intermittent shut down of facilities.
The Managing Director of the PHRC, Dr. Bafred Audu Enjugu, said the ongoing phased rehabilitation of the company cost a little less than $10 million, adding that the job was holistically carried out by indigenous engineers without any foreign support.
The Managing Director of PPMC, Mrs. Esther Namdi-Ogbue, assured the GMD that the company would think outside the box to provide solutions to all the challenges confronting the company.
