Minister of​ State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe
Kachikwu, today said the lingering fuel scarcity may
persist for two more months as oil produced in the
refineries would not be sold but kept in a “strategic
reserve”. Kachikwu said this while speaking to
newsmen after a meeting with President Buhari,
members of the National Union of Petroleum and
Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and
Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria
(PENGASSAN) at the state house Abuja.
“One of the training​s I did not receive is that of
a magician, but I am working very hard to
ensure some of these issues go away​. And let’s
be honest, for the five or 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​,000​ barrels
that were allocated was to cover between 50
and 55 percent importation. So it is quite
frankly sheer magic that we even have the
amount of product 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. His Excellency 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 actually get (oil)
majors as part of the crew of those to bring in
more products so that the NNPC will sort of go
back to the capacity of what it used to do and
the majors will take over the balance of
importation. So over the next two months, we
should see quite frankly 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 them in
strategic reserve. Because the key problem
here is that there is no reserve​.​ A​ny​ time there
is a gap​ in​ supply​,​ it goes off. So we are going
to dedicate the next couple of months to
moving all the products that we produce to
strategic reserve so that we can pile up
reserves in the nation and that will 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"he said.