The widespread scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly known as petrol, may ease off in two weeks. Our correspondents learnt, on Friday, that the Federal Government and the major marketers have reached an agreement for petrol to be imported into the country urgently. The urgent importation is to commence immediately.
The scarcity of petroleum, which started about two weeks ago, has affected business and social activities across the country, led to increases in transport fares and the return of long queues at fuel stations.
In the last three days, a litre of petrol has been selling for N90 in filling stations in Lagos, while in the Black Market it has been going for as high as N110. In the South-East, South-South and the North, motorists have been paying as much as N125 for a litre of the product. But the Department of Petroleum Resources had warned, earlier in the week, that the sale of petrol at more than N65 was illegal and that any filling station operator found selling above the approved limit would have his station sealed off.
“There is no approval for any price increase at the pumps and any marketer who arbitrarily increases price is flouting the law,” a DPR official told our correspondent.
By provision of clause 3:3 of an earlier agreement between the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency and Importers on Petroleum Support Fund, subsidy payment should be made monthly and within 15 days of submission of claim.
But the PPPRA had been paying as at when convenient, leading to the build up of PSF debts to the tune of N126b which the agency has just resumed paying in bits to the marketers.
Saturday Punch learnt that Federal Government officials from the Ministry of Petroleum and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation met with the Major Oil Marketers of Nigeria on Friday and both parties agreed to explore ways to combat the crisis. The meeting, which held in Abuja, was said to have dragged for hours with the marketers insisting that government pay the remainder of the N125b debt it owed them.
An official of MONAN, who spoke to Saturday Punch, on Friday, said government had finally agreed in principle to repay all the debt. Government had paid part of the debt at the beginning of the crisis, the source said.
“We had a discussion with the Federal Government and it has committed to pay off the debt it is owing us, very soon. Based on that commitment we have started placing orders and it is going to be substantial, it is not going to be one or two cargoes,” the source said.
“If government stands by all the agreement that we have on the issue, we shall resume full importation and the scarcity may ease off in the next two weeks.”
When our correspondents called the Group General Manager, Public Affairs, NNPC, Levi Ajunoma, to confirm if the meeting took place and if an agreement was reached, he confirmed the development. He, however, refused to give full details of the meeting and the agreement reached.
“They (the marketers) have agreed to support us to import to ease off the scarcity,” the NNPC senior official said. With this latest development, the scarcity may ease off in two weeks.
Meanwhile, both the marketers and Action Congress have said that the current scarcity may be a product of a deliberate policy by the Federal Government to gauge public reaction preparatory to the deregulation of the downstream sector.
Saturday Punch had spoken to the marketers earlier on Friday before the report that government had reached an agreement with the marketers, and before the AC issued a statement signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, describing the fuel scarcity as a product of ‘governance by deceit’.
The President of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Tunji Adeniji, told our correspondent that if government wanted to end the shortage in supply, it knew what to do.
Adeniji said the prevailing scarcity was due to supply contraction caused by the stoppage of importation by marketers. He said the contraction would continue as long as government refused to pay the debt owed marketers on Petroleum Support Fund subsidy.
“The cause of the scarcity is simple. The solution to the problem is in government’s hand. If they want the crisis to abate today, they know what to do”, he stressed. When asked about the solution to the crisis, Adeniji said government should either pay the debt owed marketers and continue paying subsidy or implement the deregulation policy outright.
However, the secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Lagos zone, Mr. Nojeem Korodo, said that a few fuel trucks were still loading at depots in Lagos.
“The depots are doing an average of 30 trucks per day with most of the trucks leaving for Abuja and environs. The situation has not improved at all,” Korodo stated.
But the statement by the Action Congress accused the Federal Government of engaging in ‘deceit’. “It is clear that the government itself helped to set the stage for the fuel crisis as a prelude to increasing fuel prices under an ill-advised deregulation policy.
“This fuel crisis which has further worsened the plight of Nigerians started almost immediately the government flew its deregulation kite which indeed is a euphemism for raising fuel prices. Unfortunately, instead of levelling with Nigerians, the government has shifted all the blame on oil marketers whom, it said, had refused to import at the level they were doing before. Alas, it is not just the PDP that is Papa Deceiving Pikin. This government, sired by the PDP is also deceiving its citizens,” the statement said.
The AC added that while the marketers were not totally without blame, the government was being clever by half by asking them to continue to import fuel without a clear guideline on prices and without settling huge arrears of payment to them under the petroleum support fund.
AC also said that contrary to the claims by the government the NNPC alone could not import enough fuel to meet the national requirements, especially because it lacked the capacity to do so and also because the jetties and storage facilities it depends on are owned by the independent marketers.